Many everyday products incorporate electronics, but because the technology is often unobtrusive in its application, young people in general are not aware of the impact that it is making on their lives. At first they will make little or no distinction between the terms 'electrical' and 'electronic' so a feature of an introductory course should be to seek to enlighten them on this. Even people who know what electronics is find it difficult to agree on a definition, so it is unlikely to be appropriate to employ definitions in an attempt to reveal the nature of electronics to pupils. What they need is to experience it in action. This experience should be over as broad a spectrum of applications as possible and this leads to a further question: How do we do this? The author would use the 'systems approach'. This reverses the order of the stages in the traditional approach, taking the study of complete systems first; next identifying subsystems or building blocks, then putting them together to create new useful systems. Only at the end are the properties of the individual components considered. Even at this stage they are not considered for their own sake but only in sufficient detail to enable understanding of the operation of the building blocks. By starting with complete systems pupils can gain immediate experience of some applications of electronics, giving a base upon which to build as they study the operation of the systems more deeply.
