According to a reference, the number of Information and communication technology (ICT) software and hardware has increased over 10 years ago, but these technologies are not percolating through recent school life. Actually, ICT users per school were very small and about 10% of staff member per school used Internet for instructional purpose in 1998. In spite of the high investment of ICT and some support programs for school staff, the achievement of student was lower rank among other countries.In 2006, an ICT survey conducted by Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF means Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany) showed us that the rate of using computers had increased for education purposes in many subjects, professional applications, and teacher’s tasks.
Then I show you some charts about information of the survey.
(The charts are the same as those of the old post.)
The chart above, based on that survey, show us that about half of primary students use computers for Mother tongue, mathematics and a study group, and around 30% of them do Internet for society, science, and a group work. We can see that schools tend to use them as a tool of basic classes and a group study. In Secondary school, about three-quarter of students do in an Informatics class and the percentage rise in Vocational school, 83%. According to this, the purpose of using computers gets more professional and many schools have aims to have them to take a computer education in some academics. “Informatics” itself may be seen simple, but it has many varieties of areas, genome informatics, legal informatics, musical informatics, medical informatics, for example. From these, this will say a professional training at an early age and a high prize in Germany.
The tendency is seen from the bottom-left chart. It shows the rate of using computers outside a class in 2008. Although the rate at Primary school shows one out of three students using, the rate of Secondary school is two in three students, in addition, Vocational school is four out of five students, and the rate is clearly increasing. It seems that the more age is rising, the more necessary computers get in their lives because it is efficient for their works. The Bottom-middle one also proves the expansion of computer using. Preparing between in 1998 and in 2006, the figures are rapidly going up in both men and women.
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At last, why do many students start to use computer for their study, especially Informatics after Primary school? The reason lies on a historical German education system
Why are computers related with Informatics?
It is said that “Berufsbildung” which is a law of the compulsory of job training was the beginning of an improvement of German job system in student’s life in 1969, and after executing, vocations have been associated with school educations as a process of job until today. In German school, all students have 12 years compulsory education, and when they finish the first 4 years in Primary school, they can choose a course of job training (6 years or more) if they want. The reason why they can do so from a young age is in a German policy of employment decision. A reference says that it is very important for German people to have qualification requirements and complete training to get a job. An academic record is a just process to go to the step.
In such policy, present Informatics has many kinds of disciplines and they are in the process of developing today. The more complex the contents get, we need wiser ways and useful tools. Then, one way of them is using convenient applications installed in a computer, for example, Excel for figuring and arranging economic data, special equipments for studying a new type virus and design tools for build a building. Helping us well, but some of them also require us advanced techniques to use them effectively and they are surely necessary for our future, so they learn in such a special school.
I’ll write about “Dual-system” which is other popular policy for German vocational education.
