The Role of ICT and Informatics in Austria's Secondary Academic Schools

Secondary academic schools in Austria provide students with a broad and extended general education. That is their mission. But although these schools consider it as one of their foremost tasks to impart knowledge, they also aim at providing students with other qualifications and skills. This paper describes the special and important role of Informatics and ICT on the lower and upper secondary level. Here an attempt is made to constitute the claim for the subject Informatics as part of general education from a scientific point of view. The recent and still ongoing shift of this subject from the upper level to the lower level secondary education caused some confusion about the allegedely different subjects such as introduction into Informatics, IT or ICT. In the perception of a broad public and even of teachers these terms mean almost the same thing. In this paper I suggest the acceptance of a broader view of the subject Informatics. Moreover an evaluation of all ongoing informatical activities at the secondary academic schools in Austria and subsequently the building of a framework of informatical competence for the whole scope of these particular schools is desirable.