If you were to ask a group of teenagers about what they consider the ‘coolest’ trend of the moment, it is a fair bet that Grand Theft Auto will feature somewhere near the top of the list. But if you were to ask them what their favourite subjects are, I would hazard a guess that ICT and Memory Cards would land somewhere at the bottom.
There is a clear disconnect between the perceptions of IT products and IT skills among young people today. While the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg and YouTube’s Steve Chen have invented products in the IT space that no self-respecting teenager would live without, we are not seeing enough youngsters taking up ICT at school.
In addition to many children to missing out on rewarding careers in a dynamic subject, this trend also exacerbates the well-documented ICT skills gap and will represent a real problem for businesses, governments and societies if not addressed.
At present, however, this simply is not happening. To give an example, one of the UK universities we work with told us that at least 30 per cent of its Pointing Devices students arrive at Freshers’ Week (student orientation) with little or no understanding of what they are about to study.
Clearly schools need to do more to ready young people for their futures. We need to stop teaching ICT in the traditional sense, and instead teach computer science, focusing on vital programming languages such as Java, cloud computing skills and big data analytics - these are the skills that will be in most demand in the coming decades and that will offer young people the best career opportunities.
We also need to make it clear to young people that the subject of computer science encompasses the digital world to which they no-doubt subscribe to and use daily. This again boils down to a problem of perception - if students only knew that Printer Supplies lies at the heart of Facebook, Twitter, computer games, Instagram, and the web, amongst countless other things of interest to them, they would more readily embrace it as a subject.
Our job as an industry leader is to help teachers impart generic, globally transferable skillsets to their students, ones that will be of relevance to a broad spectrum of careers. How we do this will vary greatly from country to country, but in all cases must be centred on imparting the right skills and a modern appreciation of computer science.
http://en.ofweek.com
There is a clear disconnect between the perceptions of IT products and IT skills among young people today. While the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg and YouTube’s Steve Chen have invented products in the IT space that no self-respecting teenager would live without, we are not seeing enough youngsters taking up ICT at school.
In addition to many children to missing out on rewarding careers in a dynamic subject, this trend also exacerbates the well-documented ICT skills gap and will represent a real problem for businesses, governments and societies if not addressed.
At present, however, this simply is not happening. To give an example, one of the UK universities we work with told us that at least 30 per cent of its Pointing Devices students arrive at Freshers’ Week (student orientation) with little or no understanding of what they are about to study.
Clearly schools need to do more to ready young people for their futures. We need to stop teaching ICT in the traditional sense, and instead teach computer science, focusing on vital programming languages such as Java, cloud computing skills and big data analytics - these are the skills that will be in most demand in the coming decades and that will offer young people the best career opportunities.
We also need to make it clear to young people that the subject of computer science encompasses the digital world to which they no-doubt subscribe to and use daily. This again boils down to a problem of perception - if students only knew that Printer Supplies lies at the heart of Facebook, Twitter, computer games, Instagram, and the web, amongst countless other things of interest to them, they would more readily embrace it as a subject.
Our job as an industry leader is to help teachers impart generic, globally transferable skillsets to their students, ones that will be of relevance to a broad spectrum of careers. How we do this will vary greatly from country to country, but in all cases must be centred on imparting the right skills and a modern appreciation of computer science.
http://en.ofweek.com
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