Changes Coming in Fall 2009 for Computer Applications Contest
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 1:00 PM
Being a contest directly related to technology, Computer Applications promises to be an ever-changing entity. For the past year, information has been disseminated that the Computer Applications Contest will support only Office 2007 starting in the fall of 2009. Now is the time to be certain that your schools have Office 2007 for competition next fall.
Being directly linked to Microsoft Office, this contest must change as this application package changes. As students graduate into the workplace or into college, they are better prepared to compete with the current skills of Office 2007, which has already been in the marketplace for two years, instead of fettering them to Office 2003. Office 2007 operates in a very different environment than Office 2003, and these changes have impacted the contest. Many elements have changed their appearance and operation. Many have been added, and several elements have been discontinued in this transition. For the past two years, the contest has supported both platforms. This has impacted the tests which have included instructions for both platforms and printouts for both platforms whenever these have varied, and variances in the grading to encompass both platforms.
A recent survey to more than 200 Computer Application coaches addressed the upcoming change and the impact it is expected to have on participants in the contest. There was a small percentage who felt that the change would create a hardship on their school districts and possibly preclude their participation. The large majority (nearly 75 percent) favored using strictly Office 2007. Thanks enormously to those who responded! The Computer Application coaches are the absolute backbone of this contest, the driving force.
In the same survey coaches were asked for comments and critiques of the contest. Some of the suggestions involved making the directions for tests less complicated and putting instructions "in order" so that students don't have to "go back" to change things. Using only Office 2007 should resolve this problem. Many said that grading was hard, and tests had too many discrepancies. Hopefully, some of this will be alleviated when there are not separate printouts and grading instructions for the two different packages.
Other comments centered on the difficulty of the contest. The intention is to closely monitor the results from District, Region and State to determine if the difficulty level should be reset a bit. Clearly, this is an extracurricular contest, and as that, it is not expected to track the classroom learning environment, but to extend students' expertise beyond the basics.
I also got quite a few suggestions to make the contest reflect Excel and Word and cut back on Access. Of all the applications, Word is the most straightforward, and Excel is the most fun. Students commonly gain a good mastery over both of these well before they begin to become proficient in Access. Access is simply not intuitive as are the others. The learning curve is considerably greater, and for that reason, knowledge of Access is particularly valuable in the workplace. If the use of Access were moved to higher level tests, students who are jackrabbits in Excel will definitely rise to the top. However, these same students, if they have not also mastered Access, will hit a brick wall when it is introduced at a higher level. The intention is to encourage the students who are well rounded and have a command of all three packages to rise to the top.