So I'm doing a double A-level ICT course (UK I think you call them APs in the US) and I am confused on how half this stuff is supposed to get me a job in IT or even a university place in a computer course. At the moment I have to write about and make individual learning plans, then evaluate them. The next task to write about peoples learning styles, then after that look at company legislations and polices with employees. Are you getting the picture here? The whole lack of computers thing and feeling like I took on a teaching and business course. Some things we did make sense like write about computer hardware which was easy enough but for most people in my class this was the first time they heard of things like AMD, sata, SSD and so on, which makes me wonder why they are doing this course. We also had to make a basic website in word press and learn about tech support. However most of the course feels irrelevant and pointless like there was very little in the course so they added all this non computer nonsense just to bulk out the course. I honestly feel I have gained more knowledge from YouTube, Tek Syndicare, Linus Tech tips, Tom's Hardware and other computer sites than I have this year during the course.
Anyone have an explanation for all the non computer stuff in the course and how it is supposed to help me get a IT job or IT university place?
not meant to be a smartass
this show rings some truth
I remember this show I used to love it. Now I want to watch it again.
I can relate to this. I have done GCSE ICT in high school and it was utter horse shit. It had nothing to do with computers or any technology. I didn't really care for it because i knew it was useless in the first place. As a result I got a U grade and some people got A even though they were less technologically literate than me.
In College/Sixth Form I took A-level Computing which was better in terms of content but coursework was still pure dog shit. Lot of theory and nearly no hands on practise. At the beginning of the course there were ~30 people in the class. By the second year there was 4 of us including me. After we finished the course was cancelled due to not being popular. For some people it was too hard and for others it was boring.
Somehow I managed to get into University for Foundation Degree in Computing. Then progressed to BSc Software Engineering. FdSc was great. BSc was not. I have to say it mostly depends on your teachers. If the teacher is good then you will enjoy the course no matter what it is. And if the teacher is shit then even your favourite parts will be difficult to do. Brave yourself, the lecturers at the Uni WILL NOT GIVE A SHIT about you. In fact they will see you as a nuisance. This is what i was told by my teacher in the FdSc Computing and he was right. The environment at university is very different to the one of college. I was shocked myself by the level of bureaucracy they managed to establish.
During my degree I spent most of the time drawing UML diagrams and writing essays and reports. In the 1st year they will teach you the minimum basics and nothing more. From this point on you will be on your own. 2nd year is harder and the bullshit content % will increase. 3rd year is the worst. If you ask for help the lecturers will basically shit on your head and blame you for everything. Some of them teach literally fuck all. Some of them teach irrelevant content which is what you mentioned. And some of them are cool and they do help you. But in my case good 70% 80% were shit. Now that's not to say all degrees are like that. A friend of mine in the same uni was doing Games programming and said his teachers were really cool dudes.
To answer your question, no it will not help you to get a job. For some reason they believe that writing endless pages of nonsense will turn people into IT professionals. You are expected to learn everything by yourself. Which defeats the point of paying for education. Basically you pay to be told what you have to learn. The truth is they don't want to tell you the things you need to know. And you will realize this very quickly when you get there. But i do not understand why they do this. It's as if they are trying to dumb down the entire society. perhaphs...
"Bureaucratic administration dominates the people through knowledge.
Technical knowledge and practical knowledge... Keeping their knowledge secret increases their superiority. "
-Max Weber-
So here I am, 4 years of university and I still don't know how to code.
I found myself in your shoes last year, I too studied ICT at A-level (not double award however). You should not worry about the content of your ICT.
From finishing ICT at A-level I 'learnt' how to write a report on evaluating different elements on a website (hardly benetifical IMO) in saying that all it got me the UCAS points to get me into university; which I am now studying Computer Forensics BSc.
I would try your best on achieving the grade you need to get into your first choice of University and course.
My course for example introduced me to Java programming, along with HTML5 and JQuery. All of which I never touched on in A-levels. But I would say I have a good understanding.
You should look at the course break down (assuming you know the course you want next year) on your university of choice's website. From which you should get an introduction to programming or whatever is on your course syllabus, and learn that over summer!
Tl;dr: I learnt ICT at A-level which never helped me, but worked hard nevertheless to get the UCAS points to university.
I cannot tell you to much about the situation in great britain, but I can assure you that in both school systems that I have experienced, Germany and Canada, the IT-classes were complete garbage. In germany, the only thing I got from these classes that I'd consider valuable was some basic understanding of HTML (we are talking 12-15 years ago). Apart from that, all we did was playing doom and duke nukem that we had smuggled into class ;-). In canada, they tried to give us some basic understanding of Java, but in such a way that we would not be able to solve any real-life problems with it.
Hardware was never a topic whatsoever. I only had one physics teacher who actually thought us something about the binary system and how computing actually works at its very core.
So don't expect to learn too much about all that stuff in school. If that's what you want to do as a job or in university, try to learn something on your own. Maybe try Lynda.com or something, I don't know. Every bit helps.
The IT world is so huge there's is no way you'll ever know it all, and you haven't said what job you want to do? Give us a clue, and I'll try to point you in the right direction.