9Oct 07
Education more than algebra and alliteration
Posted by Sheryle Moon @ 12:12 4 comments
Is our education system rapidly becoming archaic as we plunge headlong into a world where people trade their DNA on eBay? Where virtual supply chains and on-demand products rule? And where people conduct virtual romances with people they've only met through cyberspace?
Today's educators are faced with a myriad of challenges as they prepare young people for a society so heavily reliant on an industry -- the ICT industry -- that changes so rapidly.
Thought leaders in education are now suggesting that the top 10 in-demand jobs for 2010 did not exist in 2004. If this is the case, how do we prepare the next generation of workers for technologies that are not yet invented?
This question is vitally important to business leaders, educators, parents and politicians in today's world. Together, we must examine the way we are educating our kids.
Currently, we estimate that almost 80 percent of Australians are in the information-making business -- creating something in the workplace that you can't drop on your foot.
ICT is the future -- and a future evolving at an exponential rate. Ensuring our young people receive the best education possible is not so much about algebra and alliteration, but arming them with the knowledge and skills they will need to ensure our country continues to develop and prosper.
So, the survival skills of the future will be about learning how to find and assess the very latest information. In a digital world, it will be those who ask the right questions, not those who know the answers.
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It is certainly difficult to teach IT in the classroom. There are a multitude of problems, including expense of the equipment required, finding qualified teachers and keeping abreast of change.
The first is surmountable, with enough funds. It is a matter of setting priorities, so that funds are directed into the area. The second concern is more difficult. People who have the knowledge and background to be able to teach IT skills could usually get much better paid jobs elsewhere. Since money seems to be the current motivator for people to choose their work and not the desire to give back to the community, this will limit the number of good candidates.
Then change, that brutal force that rushes through and makes everything outdated while your back is turned comes into play. By the time the course content has been made, half of it will have become old practice. It is too difficult to keep up with the pace that the IT industry moves at. But as I see it, as long as the rudiments of a few programming languages are taught, students should be able to teach themselves the new developments. The internet they will most likely teach themselves. It could be useful to have a course of the history of IT developments and their importance, as well as a current affairs element, where the students have to keep themselves up to date with what is happening in the computer world. If they are taught how to search for information about things they need to know, which almost any subject will teach them, they will know how to tackle problems they encounter later.
As for maths and literacy no longer being relevant, I think that is nonsense. Since I started working, the need to understand basic mathematics has been an underlying requirement. Mathematics is needed to be able to have the logic to write even simple code. Literacy too is made even more important by the information age. Its called Information and COMMUNICATION Technology. If someone struggles to be able to read and communicate in their language, how can they appreciate the backbone of IT, which helps us to relate information to each other or have a hope of digesting the enormous amounts of information that the net has made available?
When completing courses at University or school, we knew that most of what we learned would be useless when we ultimately found a job. University was teaching us problem solving skills. We applied these skills to our job when we started. Why can we not continue with this idea?