Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
> 
> hia,
> sorry for not participating in the discussions - been out of town for
> the weekend
> /*here i go*/
> 
> > "students in schools" - these are for fellows past 8th std.
> 
> in the wbse, computer education, afaik, officially starts at 9
> in class 9, there is an computer science additional subject
> in 11, u get 2 flavours,
>         1. Computer Sc.
>         2. Computer Applications
> 
> the last one is taken by mostly students opting for the humanities
> stream, as they don't have much maths related stuffs in that.

Sayamindu has given us a good idea of the computer syllabus prescribed
by the West Bengal Board. Sample question papers for the "National Cyber
Olympiad", available at the site
http://www.scienceolympiadfoundation.com/html2001/samnco.shtml
give a fair idea of the computer syllabus of the Central Board.

My point is that we should be teaching students something of a fairly
permanent nature in relation to computers (such as *concepts* about
computer organization, machine and assembly languages, operating
systems, files and data storage, higher level languages and so on) and
not something that is likely to change at the whim and fancy of an
individual or organisation (such as MS Office version 6.0, which will
become obsolete as soon as version 7.0 is announced).

Once we decide to do that, then we have to look for the best way to do
it (the "right tools" that Russell talked about). In order to illustrate
concepts, we need concrete examples: and then we have no choice but to
talk about some particular pieces of hardware and software. It is here
that Linux, being open source and also inexpensive, is likely to score
over Win??. But if we merely decide to replace Win with Linux and
MSOffice with OpenOffice in the school syllabus, then we're not making
any progress at all, and in that case we need not take the trouble of
striving to have Linux introduced in schools.

- Manas Laha

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