I was recently talking to a family friend, a 7-year-old
girl, the conversation turned to my occupation and she had to guess what I
taught. It took her a while, guessing English, Science, Maths before me giving
her a hint by acting out typing on a keyboard and using a mouse. Straight away
she shouted “Computing!” When this happened, I paused to think about the
difference between generations and what they label my subject.
We know that changes to the national curriculum have
resulted in ICT changing to Computing. Computing is the study of the science
behind computers, how they work, how to program and the components that
constitute a computer. This is a change from ICT: a subject where one studies
how to use a computer and the different software on a computer. Both are
important, this is not a post about why one is better than the other, they both
have their benefits and drawbacks. What I want to focus upon is how, as a
teacher of Computer Science (as on my job description) I feel like a snob. I
have had experiences where I have been talking to people from older generations
and when they talk or discuss my subject they always refer to it as “ICT”. I
have even had an experience where a cover teacher asked what I taught, when I
stated Computing, they replied with something along the lines of “don’t kid
yourself lass, it’s ICT”. As a socially polite young “lass” I just laughed this
off, but it made me think about how the title teacher of Computing sounds to
different generations. To the cover teacher, it was snobby and perhaps trying
to be something that it is not. To the 7-year-old girl it was the subject she
was studying in primary school. Either way both of these can be linked to
socialisation. The cover teacher must have been socialised in the 2000s era
where ICT and OCR Nationals were rife: ICT was screenshotting how you created
that bar chart in Excel and creating PowerPoints with far too many animations
and transitions. On the other hand, The 7-year-old girl is part of the current
generation at the receiving end of the changes to the national curriculum: the
focus on coding, Scratch being the favourite at primary school [and sometimes
secondary school] level. Myself on the other hand, I am caught between the two,
having experienced ICT within my own education, but being trained and teaching
Computing.
