Hacking the Curriculum: Creative Computing and the Power of Play
By Ian Livingstone & Shahneola Saeed
John Catt Educational Limited, 2017. ISBN 9781909717824
Given the massive impact of the videogames industry on the UK economy, computing in schools is still catching up to a large extent. Prior to 2014 the ICT curriculum in schools focused on the use of Microsoft Office software and little else; the creative programming skill required to grow a huge games industry was developed by individual hobbyists in their bedrooms rather than through the school system. Acknowledging that our children need to be ready for a digital future, recent curriculum changes have attempted to address this, with coding being described as ‘the new Latin’ by many reformers since 2010 . However, this in turn has landed a mass of new curriculum initiatives on the plates of teachers, many of whom only studied the old ICT curriculum if they studied ICT at all.
