Informatics education is fundamental to modern education. Through this discipline, the digital world is developed and that this must be safe, secure and just. Currently many developments involving Informatics are shaping medicine, education, transport, etc. and pupils need to be attuned to that and to the tremendous opportunities that exist; such potential will only increase in the future.
Techniques such as interaction, simulation and modeling, algorithm development, visualization, communication, searching capabilities, remote access to web sites, machine translation, machine learning can be used to enhance learning across all disciplines leading to a deeper understanding and appreciation of all disciplines.
The Discipline of Informatics
Note that in Europe we tend to use the term “Informatics” to denote the subject known in the USA and elsewhere as “Computer Science” (CS) or “Computing”.
Informatics is the science whose effect can be seen in two ways. It has created the new digital world in which text, images, movies and dynamic models of the real world can be stored, retrieved and manipulated, alongside a virtual world of games and simulation. It has been a major accelerator and often a necessary tool in research and development within all of the other sciences and engineering and created new disciplines in collaboration with them by developing new models of representing domain specific data and novel ways of human interaction with those models.
Informatics has its own corpus of concepts, theories, principles, methods, body of knowledge, and open issues [1, 2]. Through its scientific methods and technological developments, Informatics has brought about transformational change across a range of sectors. It now plays a vital role in every aspect of society, and challenges and affects all professions, disciplines, and school subjects. Its contribution to economic development is widely recognised and it has enabled advances and novel research in many disciplines. Its social impact is apparent in the ubiquitous nature of the World Wide Web and its further exploitation in the Internet of Things. Its scientific relevance is backed up by about 2 million peer-reviewed articles (out of an estimated overall total of 70 million) published in academic journals throughout the world since its birth around 60 years ago.
Digital Systems
The current world is no longer an environment populated – beyond living entities and inanimate objects – just by physical man-made objects and systems. In current society, aptly called the “digital” society, there is a huge variety and number of “digital systems”, devoid of any physical substance, which affect our physical world. Just think of the entire communication and media sphere, where physical letters and messages are now completely dematerialized in the form of e-mails, posts, and tweets (and the digital systems managing them), or of the social network sphere, where digital systems more and more substitute for what once was direct meetings and encounters. Even more impact is expected by the burgeoning of digital systems based on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, promising to provide “digital assistants” able to make work both more efficient and more effective.
This realm of “digital systems” is driven by scientific laws (and their technological instantiations), similar to those in the realm of physical machines. Understanding the principles of this science early in school is essential to allow a harmonious development of the digital society, to allow every citizen to have the basic knowledge required to understand, use, participate in, influence, and contribute to the development of the digital world. An improved understanding of the discipline of Informatics will facilitate the evolution of a fair, just and safe society. This will also have the long term effect of increasing the availability of skilled personnel which every industry sector needs to continue its progress and to fully realize its potential.
Moreover, with its unique capability of precisely describing how information can be automatically managed and processed, Informatics provides new cognitive insights and a useful common language for all subject areas. Digital models allow any subject to be taught in novel and more engaging ways, and data-driven approaches (coupled with the availability of extremely large data sets) are opening doors to new dimensions of understanding and radical new ways of learning subjects. Similarly, through programming of simulations and games, knowledge and insight in a subject can be expressed in more individual, novel, useful and creative ways (instead of the traditional reproduction of knowledge in written or oral form).
Simulation of phenomena and scenarios which, through computer programs makes abstract models both concrete and executable, has become a third paradigm of doing science, sometimes the only viable one when theory is unmanageable and experiments infeasible. In every scientific domain, “computational scientists” work side by side with theoreticians and experimentalists in the quest for understanding nature. Informatics is their base language, much as mathematics is for theoreticians. It has been a major accelerator and often a necessary tool in research and development within all of the other sciences and engineering and created new disciplines in collaboration with them. Without Informatics there would be no space travel, robotics, mobile communication…
Informatics Education
In Europe, education is a matter left to the individual states. However, education, competencies, and preparedness of the workforce are all important matters for the European Union (EU). Importantly, there is a recognition that the education systems of Europe do not collectively prepare students sufficiently well for the challenges of the digital economy. These systems need to be fundamentally transformed and modernized. In January 2018, a Digital Education Action Plan [3], which set out a number of priorities, was published by the EU. The most relevant priority for our initiative is “Developing relevant digital competences and skills for the digital transformation,” and the Plan suggests one way to implement this is to “Bring coding classes to all schools in Europe.”
This is important, but more is needed.
Given that digital technology is taking an increasingly relevant and pervasive role, providing to all citizens an appropriate level of informatics education is necessary to ensure balanced development of the digital society. Informatics for All is a catalyst for important thoughts for reforming the wider educational systems to the benefit of students and employers, and ultimately the economy of Europe.
References
[1] The Royal Society (2012): Shut down or restart? — The way forward for computing in UK schools.
[2] Académie des Sciences (2013): L’enseignement de l’Informatique en France: Il est urgent de ne plus attendre.
[3] European Commission (2018): Digital Action Plan, Brussels, Jan 17, 2018