Computers in schools

Madam, – We want to increase knowledge of computing (not just the use of computers) in schools

Madam, – We want to increase knowledge of computing (not just the use of computers) in schools. A computing curriculum for secondary schools students has been designed, piloted and tested for the last two years in Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre. It is designed for use as a transition-year module. The curriculum was distributed by our partners, the Irish Computer Society, to all schools in the country last September. The teaching materials use a free software tool called Scratch (www.scratch.ie), described as “the YouTube of interactive media”. The materials have already been adopted by a core group of pioneering teachers. We would like to see national support for teaching computing included in this Government initiative. – Yours, etc,

CLARE McINERNEY,

Lero – the Irish Software

Engineering Research Centre,

University of Limerick.