IT/ICT in schools

[Gachr]

Hello, I just began a new school year yesterday, and today I had my first "ICT" lesson, we just got our books and that's all. I had a brief look through it, and I got shocked.

Alright, it's nothing advanced (at least supposed to be, well, they talk about stuff like BIOS and CMOS at the beginning), some things can be forgiven like referring to RAM as a "chip" or calling Linux an operating system, but then came THIS:

 

Seriously? Since when 4GB = 4000MB? I think that these guys changed the binary system, the 500MB is around, so let's say it's alright, but yeah... And these are just first few pages.

I would expect it from some kind of a school in a 3rd world's country, but official Cambridge books? What do you think about technology being taught in schools?

[ShadowCaptain]

IT in school was rubbish, I learned nothing .. at all 

 

We spend IT lessons doing powerpoint presentations and disccusing stuff. They should have introduced programming, web development, databases etc but no we barely did anything computer related

[Freaky_spider]

thats just awefull

[Thorium19]

IT in school was rubbish, I learned nothing .. at all 

 

We spend IT lessons doing powerpoint presentations and disccusing stuff. They should have introduced programming, web development, databases etc but no we barely did anything computer related

The current year 7s coming in this year will have a better understanding of computing than those who currently do A level ICT in my school, due to a change in the curriculum, as well as learning to code in Python, Java and stuff like that.

[ShadowCaptain]

The current year 7s coming in this year will have a better understanding of computing than those who currently do A level ICT in my school, due to a change in the curriculum, as well as learning to code in Python, Java and stuff like that.

 

Yeah its really good they are doing that! Those are the skills kids need and are useful

[DigitalHermit]

Hello, I just began a new school year yesterday, and today I had my first "ICT" lesson, we just got our books and that's all. I had a brief look through it, and I got shocked.

Alright, it's nothing advanced (at least supposed to be, well, they talk about stuff like BIOS and CMOS at the beginning), some things can be forgiven like referring to RAM as a "chip" or calling Linux an operating system, but then came THIS:

 

Seriously? Since when 4GB = 4000MB? I think that these guys changed the binary system, the 500MB is around, so let's say it's alright, but yeah... And these are just first few pages.

I would expect it from some kind of a school in a 3rd world's country, but official Cambridge books? What do you think about technology being taught in schools?

 

It was taught that way to us too... But instead, when tutoring I use the word "approximately" since MB->GB in industry differs (some use 1000, others use 1024)...

 

ICT in my course (Library and Information Sciences majoring in ICT and minor in Archiving) is pretty basic until you get to the stuff that prepares you for the certifications and the application development lessons... The university I'm in is a research-producing university so we're practically made to do innovations and applications in certain ways...

[Thorium19]

Yeah its really good they are doing that! Those are the skills kids need and are useful

I just wish they started it earlier. Preferably before I started secondary school. Now I'm gonna be going to university probably next year and all these 14 year olds are going to know as much coding as me

[Trik'Stari]

Yeah public schools generally are shit regardless of where you go (Assuming you are in public school)

[Gachr]

Yeah public schools generally are shit regardless of where you go (Assuming you are in public school)

Nope, private.

I had an English teacher (ICT qualified) who told us that magnets in speakers in our phones can damage drives in our laptops, even SSDs ^^

[The_Strict_Nein]

Technically (and I think this has been accepted by organisations such as IEEE), "X"B (M,G,T, etc) refers to 1000 of the previous unit, whereas "X"iB, in the case of Giga a "Gibibyte", refers to 1024 of the previous unit.

[MrSuperb]

Seriously? Since when 4GB = 4000MB? I think that these guys changed the binary system, the 500MB is around, so let's say it's alright, but yeah... And these are just first few pages.

Seriously? According to SI it is.

[Gachr]

Technically (and I think this has been accepted by organisations such as IEEE), "X"B (M,G,T, etc) refers to 1000 of the previous unit, whereas "X"iB, in the case of Giga a "Gibibyte", refers to 1024 of the previous unit.

Technically yes, but practically no. In some cases it might be true, but not with RAM, have you ever had a 500MB module?

[The_Strict_Nein]

Technically yes, but practically no. In some cases it might be true, but not with RAM, have you ever had a 500MB module?

 

Notice the phrasing, "about". Not exactly.

 

Has this book reached the concept of binary yet?

 

Because the book previously used "about" 500MB, and then qualified 4000MB with "around", it's clear they were using it to show that RAM size has increased around 6 times on average in a simple way. Seeing as this is an IT course and not a Computing one, using 500 and 4000 rather than 512 and 4096 is good enough.

 

Seriously, I don't know what country you live in, or what school year you are in, but the difference between ICT and Computing is vast.

[Gachr]

Notice the phrasing, "about". Not exactly.

 

Has this book reached the concept of binary yet?

 

Because the book previously used "about" 500MB, and then qualified 4000MB with "around", it's clear they were using it to show that RAM size has increased around 6 times on average in a simple way. Seeing as this is an IT course and not a Computing one, using 500 and 4000 rather than 512 and 4096 is good enough.

 

Seriously, I don't know what country you live in, or what school year you are in, but the difference between ICT and Computing is vast.

This is just the introduction, I didn't read whole a lot of it, just skimmed through.

I paid attention to it, that's why I didn't point the "around 500MB" out. 4000MB refers to 4GB, if it's how you interpreted it, it isn't grammatically correct, then it should be something like "around 4GB (or around 4000MB)".

[Nineshadow]

At least it's not MO(Mega-octets) like here(for God knows what reason)

[The_Strict_Nein]

At least it's not MO(Mega-octets) like here(for God knows what reason)

 

According to the 100% reliable wikipedia, it's because there was no standard for the size of a byte originally, whereas Octet is completely un-ambiguous.

[Nineshadow]

According to the 100% reliable wikipedia, it's because there was no standard for the size of a byte originally, whereas Octet is completely un-ambiguous.

Octet means a group of 8.

Obviously,in IT, an octet would be a group of 8 bits,or a byte.

But still...why????

The term byte was coined in 1956.We're in 2014.

[TheMcSame]

Does it really matter?  It's not like 24mb per 1000mb is going to make a difference anyway. It's likely just to make adding it up easier, would you rather add up in 1000's or 1024's?

 

I'd also like to point out Google agrees with the 4000mb = 4GB statement. 

Link: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=4000+mb+to+gb&gws_rd=ssl

 

[gundershot]

Oh god why...

[Enderman]

Yeah public schools generally are shit regardless of where you go (Assuming you are in public school)

My public school is great. One of the best ones in Canada

 

And my IT course was awesome. Learn Python, C++, linux system administration, and a whole bunch of cool stuff.

[Trik'Stari]

My public school is great. One of the best ones in Canada

 

And my IT course was awesome. Learn Python, C++, linux system administration, and a whole bunch of cool stuff.

Well my middle school had a basic keyboarding class, we didn't have any computer classes in high school.

[Enderman]

Well my middle school had a basic keyboarding class, we didn't have any computer classes in high school.

Aww how sad

[Trik'Stari]

Aww how sad

Very, yet we could afford to buy new football uniforms and equipment year after year, spend money on stupid "school spirit" bullshit, etc.

[Art Vandelay]

4 gigabytes is 4000 megabytes. The 1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte thing is just an approximation they do to make things easier to calculate.

[The_Strict_Nein]

4 gigabytes is 4000 megabytes. The 1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte thing is just an approximation they do to make things easier to calculate.

 

Wrong.

 

If you consider it in terms of denary it is, but binary follows base two and 1000 does not exist in base two.

 

2¹⁰ = 1024, and it was arbitrarily decided that because 10 is such a natural number to us, having each stage in the list being a multiple a power of ten (kilo = ₂10¹, mega = ₂10², giga = ₂10³) would be easy to remember.

 

However, as no one outside the computing community cares about binary, manufacturers of hard drives thought they could swindle people out of bytes of storage by listing in a base 10 format rather than base 2. As such, the the public mind, 1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte. However, in terms of computing, one kilobyte IS 1024 bytes just like 1 byte IS 8 bits.

 

No hard reason, it was just decided.