2nd year of High School, Help me Choose my 2 Electives!

[CanadaBoy]

Hello,

I'm a 15 year old student, just one of the faces of Canadaboy (I'm his little brother). I only have two elective spots because I go to a catholic secondary school (St. Aloysius Gonzaga). While I only have two spots, there are 3 courses that I equally want. They are:

1. Computer Science
2. Computer Engineering
3. Design Technology

Like I said before, I like all of these courses equally, and can;t decide which one to ditch. Being so young, I don't know much about post-secondary education. One of my main questions to you guys is, Which of these will provide better post-secondary options for me?

[alv077]

None of the above.

Pump your schedule full of maths/sciences. If you have extra room, take a grade 11 class in advance (focus all efforts on the grade 11 class, universities don't look at 10 at all)

This way, you will get to keep your doors open in terms of career paths. Also, by fast tracking a grade 11 course (lets say math), you will be able to do two grade 12 maths in 11, like I did. At that point, grade 11 marks aren't really important, so all efforts go to grade 12 courses.

Besides that, by focusing on the grade 11 course, you will likely get a better mark to show to universities.

[skuric]

Hello,

I'm a 15 year old student, just one of the faces of Canadaboy (I'm his little brother). I only have two elective spots because I go to a catholic secondary school (St. Aloysius Gonzaga). While I only have two spots, there are 3 courses that I equally want. They are:

1. Computer Science
2. Computer Engineering
3. Design Technology

Like I said before, I like all of these courses equally, and can;t decide which one to ditch. Being so young, I don't know much about post-secondary education. One of my main questions to you guys is, Which of these will provide better post-secondary options for me?

I'm guessing this is for grade 11 correct?

Well, to tell you the truth, with those courses, the quality depends on the teacher/school. I took grade 11 Comp Sci and Comp Eng, and just grade 12 Comp Eng. In grade 11 Comp Sci, we used the Turing programming language to work on lots of different assignments - while this language is quite easy, you do start developing basic programming skills, and you learn some concepts that will be easy to transfer over to the harder C/C++ programming language. Comp Eng 11, we did do some basic computer engineering stuff like logic gates, boolean algebra, truth tables etc. which was semi useful. In Comp Sci 12, which I didn't take, Java is the language that is learned, which is quite a lot more useful than Turing. Comp Eng 12 at my school didn't involve any real computers or engineering, it was basically just the class working on projects that needed to be done around the school (like lighting/sound booth, slideshows) because there was no one else to do it .

YMMV, and I would find out what your teacher actually teaches in the Comp courses (I can't comment on the Design course since I have never seen it), but if you are planning to go into anything with programming, I would take the Comp Sci course for sure since it will be easier to learn the fundamentals of programming in HS rather than in uni if you plan to go that route, and MAYBE the Comp Eng course depending on what happens in it. I regretted taking Comp Eng instead of Comp Sci this year because there was actually computer stuff being taught in Sci as opposed to Eng. Also I don't know if you have any previous programming experience? If not then definitely take Sci 11 and/or 12 as that will get you used to programming (albeit in an easy language).

[CanadaBoy]

No, I'm going into Grade 10.

And, I've fooled around with Macromedia Flash.

[skuric]

No, I'm going into Grade 10.

And, I've fooled around with Macromedia Flash.

Oops

Find out what is being taught in those classes then, like I said above.

[can't get 'nough dealz]

choose whatever, it wont make a difference

[MS_Project]

Grade 10 doesn't make a difference yet.

But, choose the ones you like best.

Grade 11/12 is important. Most emphasis in grade 12.

[arreat89]

Computer Science is really boring, I took it in grade 10. All you do is work with the program Turing (which I doubt is useful at all in post secondary.) You don't get to play around with dreamweaver, or any of that. Then in grade 11 you work with Visual Basic where you actually create programs.

Go for the other two.

[Fabulaz]

choose whatever, it wont make a difference

Truth.

I'd say do D&T because it's fun, but that's just me.

[mritche]

If you want to do computer engineering or computer science, take as many high school programming courses as you can (also load up on the math and physics, if it's a choice between a math/science and programming or a math/science and design then just take the math/science).

They might seem useless, tedious, boring, or frustrating but once you get to university having that little bit of extra exposure to programming will mean you're not as hopelessly lost as some people get when programming for the first time.

[mritche]

Computer Science is really boring, I took it in grade 10. All you do is work with the program Turing (which I doubt is useful at all in post secondary.) You don't get to play around with dreamweaver, or any of that. Then in grade 11 you work with Visual Basic where you actually create programs.

Go for the other two.

Dreamweaver in a computer science class would be completely useless at best and could even be counterproductive. Web design doesn't really have anything to do with CS.

As far as what language you get to/have to use, at the level of programs you'll be creating in a grade 10 programming class Turing is pretty appropriate - it has everything you need to learn the basics behind programming without bogging you down in details. Knowing Turing won't be a skill you can directly apply to post-secondary (although the U of T ECE department did use Turing to teach programming in the mid-90s ), but the fundamentals you get familiar with in Turing are pretty relevant to what you'll do later.

[Jon Lai]

None of the above.

Pump your schedule full of maths/sciences. If you have extra room, take a grade 11 class in advance (focus all efforts on the grade 11 class, universities don't look at 10 at all)

This way, you will get to keep your doors open in terms of career paths. Also, by fast tracking a grade 11 course (lets say math), you will be able to do two grade 12 maths in 11, like I did. At that point, grade 11 marks aren't really important, so all efforts go to grade 12 courses.

Besides that, by focusing on the grade 11 course, you will likely get a better mark to show to universities.

+1 to this, for many good reasons:

1) The Gr11 Compsci/Compeng classes don't require Gr10 courses are prerequisites
2) The CompEng Gr11 course repeats 50% of what's taught in Gr10
3) The CompSci Gr10 course focuses 40% of its time on Turing, which is crap if you've even touch any programming before
4) Gr12 courses are a lot easier when you aren't stressed out of all of them in the last year, plus you can afford to take more Gr12 courses in Gr12 to widen your approach

If you really want to take CompSci/Eng, do it in Gr11 instead of starting from Gr10. The Gr10 courses are really introductory and it was more or less a waste of time for me - I spent 80% of my time checking emails and going on RFD

[Tilter]

Like what others said.

Take the Computer Science class. It's like learning to count, but its a good skill. I didn't take it and had loads of difficulty understanding concepts in 1st and 2nd year, and I still do :S