Workforce Skills Development
Technology revolutionized the business world, but it has also shifted how teachers reach students.
As educators, we are no longer the great purveyors of information because students do not need us for facts. Most students have a device in their hand or have access to a device, which means they can get the information they need with the click of a button. But we serve a more important role: we teach students how to search for valid information and transform it into a useable format. We must challenge students to use the information at their fingertips in innovative ways and to help them think critically about that information. Reading, writing and arithmetic were the basic skills needed by past generations. Today, basic skills in technology literate. Students who leave school with an industry recognized credential have a validation of skills learned that can help them get jobs or into higher education. In a world of global competition for jobs or entrance into college, earning certification puts students one step closer to their goals, with proven technology skills, whether they are entering post-secondary education or an entry-level job.
Jim Lengel earned his degrees at Yale College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has worked in government, academic, and industry organizations for 42 years. Jim began his career as a public school teacher in Vermont, where he worked his way to the post of Deputy Commissioner of Education, and was appointed to a Fulbright Scholarship in China. Jim taught at Boston University and developed the digital media program at the College of Communication. Jim continues as a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, while consulting with organizations around the world on the application of new technologies to teaching and learning. Jim has authored nine books on education and communication, including Education 3.0 from Teacher's College Press, publishes a weekly column and podcast on teaching with technology at PowerToLearn.
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Workforce Skills Development Skills- what is the starting point? In this era of technology, it is becoming much more demanding for our students to be proficient in not only what is expected but over and above it, hence the expectation from teachers has increased as well. However, when it comes to skills we need to identify the starting and core requirements. I feel schools emphasis a lot on functional skills followed by technology skills and then work skills but what about basic cognitive skills there is no structured curriculum or program to support students...
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Workforce Skills Development elearning Africa 2014: My learner to volunteer as Social Media Reporter I am excited at the prospect that the biggest ICT in Education forum in Africa is giving to one of my learners involved in project based learning program that emphasizes purposeful media creation as a way to lend a voice to young people - Adobe Youth Voices. The organizers of the eLearning Africa 2014 have interested her to be a social media reporter tasked with the responsibility of making constant update of the proceedings of the conference which is slated for May 28 to 30 2014 at Munyonyo, ...
Workforce Skills Development Nurturing Young Entrepreneurs. Panel. Mar 12th at 5:00pm, room 211/212 @ the Microsoft Global Forum in Barcelona. To learn more about the forum please use this link Youth entrepreneurship is key to driving economic growth. It is becoming the priority of many governments around the world to promote entrepreneurship and small business creation in order to drive growth through the creation of more jobs. This panel will focus on what can be done within today’s education and after school to prepare that young people to make an impact on society by building the businesses of the future. Moderator: Akhtar ...
Workforce Skills Development Fostering skills to obtain current and future jobs. Mar 12th at 3:30pm, room 211/212 @ the Microsoft Global Forum in Barcelona. To learn more about the forum please use this link Today's youth face an opportunity divide – a gap between those who have access to the skills and training they need to be successful, and those who do not. With more than 75 million unemployed youth around the world, we must work together to close this divide in order to secure the future of our youth, and of our global economy. This panel will discuss what to do in and outside the classroom to ensure young people are acquiring the right skills...
Workforce Skills Development Teaching creativity, can it be done? I recently listened to a 5 minute talk by Sir Ken Robinson where he discusses creativity in teaching. Excerpt from interview with Sir Ken Robinson for the Learning {RE}imagined book to be published mid-2014 (learning-reimagined.com). Interview by Graham Brown-Martin (about.me/grahambrownmartin) When did we start confusing teaching with Fedex? To me that was the most intriguing statement in the 5 minutes talk. I just attended a workshop for all school leaders in my county (300) in December, where...
Workforce Skills Development What Skills Future Employees Need to Learn Now The American Management Association conducted a Critical Skills Survey back in late 2012 that asked 768 managers and executives various questions about the presence of critical skills (Defined as the 4 C's: Critical Thinking/Problem Solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity) within their workforce. You can find the full report here (), but in a nutshell, most of the managers and executives responded that their employees are average at best in these four skill areas. This is an ...
Workforce Skills Development Missing Basic Skills part 2 Referring to my earlier blog post, Missing Basic Skills, I have noted that in some cases the students don't have the Basic skills needed. But how could they if even their teachers don't have them? For example, we had a teachers' training event in which the teachers were able to choose what they wanted to learn. Two most wanted things were tablets and Excel basics. The tablets I understand because they are new devices at our school but Excel?!! So, there are teachers who know the basics and use ...
Workforce Skills Development The Missing Basic Skills Today’s students can do many things with their computers, phones and other devices. They chat constantly on-line, use Facebook to connect with friends, update their profiles with new pictures and so on. At school they are taught how to collaborate with other students and teachers. They know how to find the information they need from the Internet. They probably know things that I will never learn. Students are taught to use IT almost in every possible subject you can come up with. That is all ...
Workforce Skills Development What is Craftsmanship? What is craftsmanship? The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a skill in a particular craft: I admire his engineering skills and craftsmanship; the quality of design and work shown in something made by hand; artistry: a piece of fine craftsmanship.” "Craftsmanship" has appeared quite often during my recent professional reading binge. In one book, Leaving to Learn: How Out-of-School Learning Increases Student Engagement and Reduces Dropout Rates, the authors name the pursuit of craftsmanship “...
Workforce Skills Development How Do We Ensure Our Students are Career Ready? As a teacher, have you ever found yourself lying awake at night worrying that your students weren’t being adequately prepared for their future careers? The world outside the school walls has changed at a rapid pace while much of how we do business in schools has not changed. A new report published by the IDC (International Data Corporation) confirms what many teachers fear – simply consuming information and learning traditional skills is not enough to prepare our students for their future. ...
Workforce Skills Development I'm happier with Modern Technology I introduce myself as a student who never used technology before .I never felt happy with studying my lessons and doing my homework because lots of lessons I couldn't understand because depend on books only . I was embarrassed in doing my homework as lots of hints I didn't know. Be sure , my teachers will punish me for my unsatisfied way . So , what can I do ? I learned how to hold and use a mouse and how log on the net and searching all what I need of knowledge. I find friends as me and peers ...
Workforce Skills Development A student's perspective on workforce skills and career development Q1: Introduce yourself (school, major, year) University of Washington Seattle, Information Systems and Marketing, Junior Q2: What do you think is the most important soft/hard skill? Why? I believe that communication is the most important soft skill. Communication wires and keeps everything in this place together. Without communication, it would be difficult to interact and build a better future. Q3: What industry do you see yourself in? Why? I see myself in an industry that focuses on ...
Workforce Skills Development Microsoft Student Career Survey Q1: Introduce yourself (school, major, year) UW Computer Science Junior Q2: What do you think is the most important soft/hard skill? Why? I think that trustworthiness is one of the most important skills, since there are a lot of smart people out there in the world that can get tasks done, but what I feel sets people apart is their ability to be reliable and trustworthy in terms of doing their job well. I feel like bosses look for people they can count on to do a good job and to go above and ...
Workforce Skills Development Technology and the Workforce In 1900, 41% of the American workforce were farmers. On hundred years later, only 2% of the workforce was employed in this occupation. The technologies of mechanization, crop science, and irrigation changed the face of the workforce. The same thing is happening today: digital information technologies are putting many occupations out of business. In a recent , David Autor and David Dorn observe that The multi-trillionfold decline in the cost of computing since the 1970s has created enormous ...
Workforce Skills Development Workforce Skills Around the World: Canada We have seen in previous blogs how the workforce skills needed in Asia, Europe, and the United States share many important aspects. A new report from another quarter, the province of Ontario in Canada, adds some new perspectives to what some call the global skills gap. Entitled this report by the respected and apolitical stresses "the need to make skills work." The Board's list of is especially useful to educators as a guide to what's most important. Ontario serves as the economic hub of ...
Workforce Skills Development Instructional Technologies can Help to Close the Growing Gap in Credentials Attainment and Required Workforce Skills In June I gave a breakout session at the UB Tech 2013 Conference focused on the crisis we are facing in the American educational system, and to some extent in schools across the globe. The crisis I refer to is the diminishing rate of attainment of higher education credentials and the increasing gap between skills needed in the work force and citizens equipped with those skills. Some of the underlying reasons for this widening gap include the high cost of education, inadequate retention and ...
Workforce Skills Development Reading Skills for the Modern Workforce In previous postings we have looked at the various elements of what employers rank as the most valuable of workplace skills, those of verbal communication, including speaking, listening, and writing. In this posting we look at the skill of reading, which many see as the essence of the language arts. What reading skills does the modern workforce need? And are we teaching these in school? Reading at Work What kind of reading do people do at work? Unless they work as an editor for a publishing ...
Workforce Skills Development Skills needed in the Workforce – Engineering for Tomorrow Did you know that almost everything you eat, wear, use and like to do involves engineering? Engineering is everywhere around us. There is no doubt that on the one hand engineering is often very complex thus requiring structured thinking and attention to detail, while on the other hand, engineering is also a highly creative process. It is an extremely dynamic and always evolving and for this reason, engineers are expected to keep in touch with these changes. The question is what does it take ...
Workforce Skills Development Horsefeathers, or, Quills for Carolina The state legislature of North Carolina has passed, and its governor has signed, a new law requiring that all students mater the art of cursive writing by the end of the fifth grade. Myself, I have never truly mastered cursive writing, but then, I'm far from a ten-year-old in Raleigh. When i taught fifth grade many years ago, my students called it curvis writing, because the letters were formed with curves. We were supposed to spend an hour a day practicing penmanship. Shall I go back and ...
Workforce Skills Development Listening Skills Employers rank verbal communication skills highly as necessary assets for the worker in the new economy. And these skills include writing and speaking -- which we have already discussed in is blog -- as well as listening and reading. This posting deals with the skill of listening: why it's important , and how best to teach it. The employee who can't listen well seldom understand directions, seems uninterested in what other people are saying, and has trouble participating as a member of a ...
Workforce Skills Development Speaking Skills for the Modern Workforce As we explained in the last posting about writing, communication skills rank highest among employers of the modern workforce. So this week we'll look at the skill of speaking, and how best to teach it in school. Unlike writing, to which we devote untold hours of a student's learning time, we hardly teach speaking at all in our schools. Especially for students in technical fields. And yet speaking is a key competency for just about every worker. It includes the ability to explain something to a ...
Workforce Skills Development Writing skills for the modern workforce Among the most important workforce skills listed in just about every survey of employers around the world, is communication skills. And among these are speaking listening reading and writing. Let's look at one of these key skills, writing. Writing is important for every worker in just about every job category, to be able to communicate ideas to customers or to fellow employees. It's also an important skill for the citizen in the political sphere, or with relatives and friends. Right now there's ...
Workforce Skills Development The Pyramid of Skills The United States Department of Labor, whose job it is to identify the skills needed by the modern workforce, has built a pyramid. No mummies inside, this pyramid shows the building blocks needed to assemble a modern worker. Notice the combination of hard and soft skills embedded in the blocks. () The first question is, how many of these building blocks are we taking responsibility for in our school? And to what extent can we guarantee that every one of our graduates possesses these blocks when ...
Workforce Skills Development Workplace Skills Worldwide The one of India's leading newspapers, recently surveyed 30,000 workers in the world's second largest nation on which skills they considered most essential to success in the workplace. the first three skills, by a wide margin, were: Leadership skill Initiative Relationship management These three were followed by the skills of team-work, domain expertise, out-of-box thinking and analytical skills. In the United States, the asked employers which skills were most important in a candidate for...
Workforce Skills Development Measuring Workforce Skills: Time, Rank, or Knowledge? Educators in the United States seem obsessed with measuring the skills of their students. We administer our own the and tests, the and , the National Assessment of Educational Progress, as well as the and the American students, schools, governments, and organizations spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on these measurement schemes. We spend another chunk of millions to accredit schools and colleges to ensure they they are performing their duty. Do these schemes truly ensure the ...
Workforce Skills Development Transforming the workplace - an interesting perspective Great article, about how work is transforming and how we have to change as well. Much of our learning will come from "technology enabled informal learning" so true, this is how many of us survive today. We need to continuously learn and draw from experiences and people around us. I completely agree with the self-directed learner model!! It is the only way we should be. What do you think? ...
Workforce Skills Development Ethics Education for a Technical Workforce Some call him a hero, some a traitor. Either way, the story of Edward Snowden has captured the attention of a worldwide audience. To some, he's a spy tuned whistle-blower who has uncovered tawdry government secrets and released them to the world. To others, he's a double agent who gave away important American intelligence to the enemy. The question is, did Snowden know what he was doing, and why? It turns out that Snowden was not a spy at all, but a geek -- a computer systems administrator who ...
Workforce Skills Development Learning Another Language At dinner the other night in North Carolina, the discussion turned to XMPP. Was it better-suited to the current task than IRC? Would Google's new GMC replace them all? As two of us went on in this direction, comparing XMPP, IRC, and GMC to the classic TCP/IP, the other four were lost. It was Greek to them. Or rather Geek. We were talking in a foreign language. Perhaps this was rude to our dinner companions, but without knowledge of this language, the project we were working on could not have been...
Workforce Skills Development The Nature of Work Many educators question the relevance of the so-called 21st-Century skills that have been discussed in this blog. They claim that only a few graduates -- high-tech workers and managers -- will need those higher-level skills, but that most of the workforce will not be using them. Instead, they'll need the same skills workers have always needed to succeed: to come to work on time, obey orders, master routine manual and clerical tasks. Most of the world's work, they say, such as making light bulbs...
Workforce Skills Development Workplace 1-2-3 Workplace 1-2-3 Today's workplace looks nothing like the workplace of 100 years ago, or even 20 years ago. What people do at work, and how they do it, have changed considerably. As we think about the skills needed for tomorrow's workforce, it may prove useful to look back and analyze how the workplace has changed over time. Workplace 1.0 150 years ago, people in Brazil and Europe and in China and in the USA worked on the land, outdoors, with hand tools, in small groups. They did not travel ...
Workforce Skills Development Getting a Job - What Matters Most? Scott Steinberg, a top-ranked international event speaker on the lecture circuit, recently published an article on mashable - that speaks to the most important traits when hiring new employees and I could not agree more but he missed a key ingredient. Enthusiasm - the energy has to be there, this defines the entire interview when the interviewee walks in the door. For me the winning make it happen attitude prevails above all else. Communication skills - it takes 5 minutes to determine if the...
Workforce Skills Development Coding The leading lights of high-tech want us to teach more coding in the schools. Bill Gates says, "Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains." New York's mayor Bloomberg agrees: "We salute the coders, designers, and programmers already hard at work at their desks, and we encourage every student who can't decide whether to take that computer science class to give it a try." Even will.i.am ...
Workforce Skills Development TED Talks on Education In back-to-back sessions recently I listened to the TED Talks on Education one night, and the next evening listened to the newly-appointed President of Yale University explain the purpose of his school. What they had to say about workforce development was interesting. The TED talks focused on what we need to do to make schools more effective. a chemistry teacher and blended learning specialist, sees himself not as a provider of knowledge but as a cultivator of curiosity. Curiosity, suggests ...
Workforce Skills Development The Workforce We Need in Middle America The west coast is home to many high-tech companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Apple. The east coast harbors advanced institutions of higher education such as MIT, and manages the world's money at Wall Street. So you'd expect the workforce needs on the two coasts to focus on the kinds of new skills we concern ourselves with in this blog. But what about Middle America, the traditional home of our low-tech manufacturing industries? Do they need the same kind of future-orieted skills as the east ...
Workforce Skills Development The Importance of Hard Skills: Search and Synthesize The search and synthesis of information. This particular skill is one that often goes unnoticed in most tasks, although it's commonly found. It is the "process" by which we delve into the deep web and pull out relevant information, and summarizing and synthesizing it into presentable material. Since we grow up utilizing this skill countless times throughout our education, it's extremely likely we take it for granted, and don't necessarily think about how we can improve it. By specifically ...
Workforce Skills Development More Technological Opportunities In my last blog I wrote about networking and soft skills. Here I will focus on the use of technology. Another change that schools should adopt is definitely the use of more technology. In high school, the only instances where I had to use the computer were for some basic research, an occasional presentation, and turning in essays. However, through increased exposure of technology in college, I became more conscious of my learning style and became more interested in my learning as a result. In ...
Workforce Skills Development Understanding Soft Skills I had my first internship when I was a senior in high school and surprisingly, the area I struggled most with was soft skills, in particular, networking. It was surprising because I never had any problems with communication or major personality clashes so I did not think twice about it going into the job. However, the concept of approaching strangers in the hopes that they will like me and connect with me in the future was frightening and meetings with people became highly uncomfortable. While I...
Workforce Skills Development The Importance of Hard Skills: Presentations My previous blog post talked about the importance of soft skills as a supplement to a tech worker’s toolbox of hard skills. Making PowerPoint presentations, on the other hand, is a hard skill that’s applicable at numerous jobs. I’m going to cover three types of presentations that utilize a unifying framework that every future tech worker should know how to create using Microsoft PowerPoint. These types of presentations include: a consulting presentation, an academic research presentation, and a ...
Workforce Skills Development The Importance of Soft Skills: Communication We always hear about the importance of developing hard skills to “make it” in today’s workforce. From knowing programming languages like R and Python to making pristine presentations, these skills are in many tool belts of your everyday tech worker. For this blog post, however, I’m going to touch on the other side of that coin: soft skills. In particular, the skill of communication. I am a firm believer that communication skills are often the most underrated and overlooked skill that someone can ...
Workforce Skills Development Excel Your Life College students – it is in your best interest to become proficient in Microsoft Excel. It will be one of the most important hard skills you will carry on your resume particular if you are majoring in business, economics, accounting or finance. This blog post puts a strong emphasis on Excel and why it is important in your life and career. Why Excel? Because it helps you build structure and organization in different aspects of your life. It is easy to learn and is essential in today’s ...
