Institution of Analysts and Programmers

A Good Deal Better

Robin Jones — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:21:50 +0000

Members will recall, as we have reported before, that the National Skills Academy for IT offers a subscription to the whole of its huge range of IT and business courses and certifications online for only £95 for the first year.

From today, we can provide members with an even better deal. The Academy is offering IAP members a 10% discount, so you pay only £85.50 for unlimited, 24/7 access to the whole resource!

This is available to IAP members only, so you will need to quote a code when applying for your subscription at www.itskillsacademy.ac.uk/subscription.

You can find this code at the IAP’s LinkedIn group. Alternatively, email Robin Jones at jonesr@staff.iap.org.uk for more information.

Teaching ICT and Computer Science: Some Thoughts

Robin Jones — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:21:33 +0000

The New Year has started with an – apparently orchestrated – tirade against the teaching of ICT in Britain’s schools. It came in for severe criticism from Ofsted at the back end of 2011, the Royal Society has chipped in with a report from Steve Furber (of BBC Micro fame), Michael Gove has made a major speech at BETT on the subject and Google’s Eric Schmidt has made several pronouncements, notably criticising the Arts/Science divide that permeates British society. It’s worth noting that the latter problem isn’t exactly new; C P Snow wrote novels about it in the 1950s, not so long after Britain’s very survival had depended critically on the technological expertise of its scientists, mathematicians and engineers. In any event, there’s general agreement that students are bored by the presentation of ICT – as for users rather than creators of software – and this is reflected in the rapidly falling numbers of those taking the subject further.

So, you may say, the IAP is pretty late to the party. Well, yes. But anyone can dash off a quick knee-jerk press release. We feel it may be more helpful to let the dust settle and offer a considered view, taking into account the contributions of others.

So first, is ICT teaching really in such a parlous state? As so often, it’s not black and white. Many teachers have responded to the tide of criticism by saying that they do teach Java, C#, how to write smart phone apps and so on, despite not being required to do so but recognising that their students won’t see any relevance otherwise. Again, there’s nothing new here. Good teachers have always taught the subject not the syllabus. Of course, precisely because such teaching is ‘off-piste’, so to speak, there’s only anecdotal evidence for it, so it’s pretty much impossible to say what percentage of students benefit from it. But the number of students passing A level Computing has declined by 60% in under a decade, which should tell us something.

There’s also a way in which the industry itself has contributed to the boredom factor through, paradoxically, its responsible behaviour. How? Well, I’ll illustrate with an example from nearly 35 years ago. At the time, I was teaching a group of A level Computer Science students and we had just taken delivery of a shiny new RM 380Z computer. For those shorter in the tooth than I (which had better be most of you or we’re in serious trouble) this had a Zilog Z80 processor running at a dizzying 4MHz or about 1/250th the speed of a modern smart phone. It had 4KB of RAM, into which one had to cram not just a program and its data but a BASIC interpreter, unless, of course, one was writing direct machine code (no room, alas, for an assembler). With the interpreter in RAM, it didn’t take long for some students to notice that they could modify its behaviour, at the simplest level by altering the command look-up table. Today, we’d call that hacking and regard it as very bad form indeed. And, of course, it did briefly confuse some students who wondered why ‘IF’ was suddenly behaving like ‘PRINT’ or whatever. But they all learnt more about interpreters in an hour or so than I’d put into half a dozen lectures. And had fun doing it.

Now of course I’m not advocating tearing down the myriad shields and sentinels that we’ve painstakingly added to our systems as the world has become more and better connected. But it is important to recognise that these layers of security have raised barriers to learning as well as to those of malign intent.

So, what to do? I thought you’d never ask. By an extraordinary coincidence, this month sees the launch of the Raspberry Pi, a small, very cheap, single board computer designed precisely for the sort of tinkering that my students of yesteryear took for granted. See http://www.raspberrypi.org/ for full details.

We’re never going to get back to the 70s and early 80s, when pretty much the only way to get a microcomputer to do something useful was to write the code yourself but this seems like the next best thing. So I encourage all IAP members to consider how they might support the Raspberry Pi project. After all, it’s in all our interests to ensure that there’s an adequate pool of technically literate and enthusiastic youngsters wanting to enter the industry. And, as things stand, that’s not a given.

Robin Jones

Director for Professionalism and Education

New Administrative Officer Post

Robin Jones — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:49:05 +0000

We are currently advertising for an additional part-time administrative officer at our Boundary House, Hanwell office. Anyone interested should email a CV and covering letter to Robin Jones, Executive Director for Professionalism & Education at jonesr@staff.iap.org.uk.

The details of the post are:

Job description:

The key duties of the post are to:-

General
1. help maintain and develop the business of the Institution;
2. deal with incoming communications by letter, fax, email and telephone;
3. maintain computer records and the filing system;
4. keep the office stocked with necessary supplies;
5. deal with visitors;
6. make tea and coffee;
7. provide cover for other Administrative Officers while away;
8. provide secretariat services to the President, Officers and Executive Directors of the Institution;
9. route enquiries to the right voluntary or salaried colleague.

Membership Registry
1. send subscription invoices and reminders;
2. follow up invoices and reminders by letter, fax, email and telephone;
3. process payments as received;
4. maintain payment records;
5. respond to membership enquiries received by letter, fax, email and phone;
6. mail information packs and follow up, as appropriate;
7. process applications;
8. contact applicants, referees and potential members.

Support for Regions and Communities of Practice
1. provide secretariat support for Regional and Principal Fellows;
2. support and promote regional activities and events (by arranging marketing material and facilities, etc);
3. support online initiatives;
4. liaise with and co-ordinate the activities of Regional and Principal Fellows.

Event Support
1. undertake event management (for events such as the annual symposium and members’ conference);
2. arrange venues, accommodations and catering;
3. handle bookings and take payments;
4. promote events.

Other Duties
1. assist with Council and Executive Board meetings, conferences and other activities, as required;
2. facilitate membership services;
3. take minutes of Council, Executive Board and other Institution meetings, as required.

Responsible To: Operations and Finance Director

Responsible For: Office Administration, Event Support and Membership Register
Salary: £10,800 per annum (with increases for inflation)

Hours: Typically Four Hours per Weekday (times by negotiation with occasional work over weekends)

Holidays: Statutory Days plus Twenty-Five Days (some of which must be taken between Christmas and New Year when the office is closed, with other dates by negotiation such that the office is always staffed during opening hours as from time-to-time decided)

Probationary Period: Six Months

The IT Professional Profile

Robin Jones — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:31:18 +0000

Janet Richards at e-skills UK advises us that:

the IT Professional Profile, the latest offering from the National Skills Academy for IT, is now live.

The Professional Profile is completely free to use and is a secure, online record of skills, using common, sector-agreed terminology (the IT Professional Standards) which has been organised and aligned to the relevant SFIA skills and levels. This allows IT professionals to:

Log, understand and compare their IT skills and certifications
Keep detailed records of their skills in a way that makes sense to other professionals, HR departments and recruiters.
Understand their strengths, plan their careers and manage their professional development.

The IT Professional Profile takes its place alongside the existing subscription service, which brings together thousands of high quality training materials and resources which, until now, have been unaffordable for IT professionals working in small and medium businesses. It includes online courses, mentoring, e-books, test preps, express guides, tools and templates, giving you the opportunity to develop your skills and prepare for popular certifications.

Just to remind you, a subscription of £95 gives you unrestricted access to all these resources for the first year, representing extraordinary value for money. Click the link below to visit the National Skills Academy for IT for more information, to use the IT Professional Profile, and to subscribe.

Successful SharePoint Implementation

Robin Jones — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:23:47 +0000

Geoff Evelyn, FIAP follows up his recent article on SharePoint Training with a detailed guide to implementation in just ten steps. Find it here.