Mapping education news

Okay, I know it has been awhile since I last posted, like August, but there have been some family matters to attend to. 2010 is going to be different and while I put the finishing touches on a few new posts I thought I would try something different, just to see what you think.

Instead of a list of links, I thought I would map the links. Try to give a little context to where the news and interviews are being made, or perhaps where the impacts are being felt. Let me know what you think.


View Education in the News in a larger map

Links and Resources: January 1st, 2009

Over the last year I have occassionally posted a set to links to other web resources without much commentary, which I titled "Links and Resources: xxxx". In the beginning of December I phased out this type of post in favor of using del.icio.us. In that post I introduced social bookmarking, encouraged you to add my bookmarked pages to your RSS feed reader and added a linkroll listing of these links to the left-hand column of this blog.

I had a few extra links laying around so I thought I would give you one last Links and Resources post.

• Take the WASL yourself. A sample Washington Assessment of Student Learning test is available from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) web site. Good luck.
• Back during the fall round of advisory bored meetings I recommended an article titled "Reprogramming College Preparatory Computer Science" by Joanna Goode. You can find a copy of the article at the Computer Science Teachers Association web site.
• On the open courseware front, OnlineUniversities.com has posted a list of 100 awesome Ivy League lectures.
• Edublogs.tv hosts two videos of interest to those using Google: Google Search Tips and Google Advanced Search Tips.
• Liz Davis hightlights some of the web 2.0 successes at her school during the last school year.
  

This next group of links comes from the Edmonds Community College Newsvine feed. Newsvine is something of a cross between a blog and social bookmarking. You can add your own content to your column or you can seed it with other content (add links). In addition to their own feed, EdCC appears to contribute to a Newsvine Group titled The Academe. Let me recommend that you give both a look and again, much thanks to EdCC communications for hunting down these next three links

• This Puget Sound Business Journal article highlights the problem of manufacturering jobs going unfilled, even as the economy turns sour. Article highlights EdCC challenge in filling some of the specialized vocational-technical programs aimed at this employment gap.
• Local post-secondary education faces many challenges. Five college presidents sit down and discuss the challenges on this episode of KUOW's Weekday.
• The Enterprise newspapers don't think the right place to start cutting the state budget is at the community colleges in this op-ed piece.
  

And, as has been the tradition, I end with something fun. Do you find those workplace posters with sayings and pictures of rowing shells inspirational? Me neither. So you'll like this selection of demotivational posters from Despair.com.

Oh, and for Paul at the Last Great Road Trip, when I say this is the last links post, I mean it is the conclusion not the ultimate.

Links and Resources: November 18th, 2008

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. -- Eric Hoffer

• Opps, maybe IT isn't as recession-proof as columnist were predicting (that bubble burst quick). Over at ZDNet "Tech workforce pinched by economy, feeling like 2003" gives the bad numbers for layoffs in the tech sector, especially for telecom, electronics and computer industries.
  
• However, there is still hope for other parts of the profession. Michelle Singletary picked "150 Best Recession-Proof Jobs" for her Color of Money Book Club (Everett Herald Nov. 2nd). #1 on their list was computer systems analyst. #5 was post-secondary teacher. Mrs. Advisory Bored, who teaches computer systems analysis at a community college, was rather smug the remainder of the day.
  
• Computerworld's 2008 Salary Survey seems to indicate that "The hottest IT skills survive a cool economy". The survey tells us that businesses need to get the most of the technology they already have. Web developers, network administrators and information security managers stand to do well regardless of the economy.
  
• At the most recent Everett SD technology advisory committee we briefly touched on the issue of the under-representation of certain demographic groups in IT. In the article "Making a Case for Diversity in STEM Fields" the authors argue that the lack of diversity isn't merely an unfortunately civil rights issue, but, given the importance of STEM, has significant implications for our economy and future. The article is hosted at MentorNet, an eMentoring site for science and technology fields (more here).
• eSchool News reports that the "Nations first tech-literacy test" will be included in the Nation's Report Card starting in 2012. (I assume they mean information technology, because a stapler is technology and we don't need a test on it.) A contract was awarded to develop the framework for the assessment, but there is plenty left unresolved. They don't even know which grade-level will be tested.
  
• And let us conclude with something fun. Paul over at the Last Great Road Trip sent me a link to Oblong Industries. Oblong makes g-spatial, a spatial operating environment. Watch the video.
  

Links and Resources: October 30th, 2008

“After bread, education is the first need of the people.”
--Georges Danton

• I've been participating the Work Literacy online class covering web 2.0 tools for learning professionals. It has been very informative, although I've been behind. I still can't figure out how I can fall behind in self-pace education! Anyway, if you are new to web 2.0 tools and their use in learning I would recommend you peruse the site, check out the many links and read the discussion boards.
  
• The ACM CareerNews mailing provided two links on the outlook for IT jobs in a slowing economy. "Wall Street's collapse may be computer science's gain" looks at the prospect of students turning away from finance programs for seemingly safer careers in computer science. "Hiring Survey: The IT Skills in Highest Demand" summarizes a Robert Half study on the state of IT skills now and in the future.
• CIOInsight asks "Is the IT Profession Recession Proof". I'm guessing that most IT staffers at WaMu are a little worried, but maybe the rest of us are in pretty good shape.
  
• Jen at the injenuity blog has made a number of her photographs available for use as slide backgrounds under Creative Commons licensing (see them all here). Jen's day job is in workforce development. She has created a Ning network on that topic here, although it doesn't look to be real active at the moment.
  
• If you aren't familiar with Creative Commons licensing I suggest you read their about page to get an overview. In a nutshell, it is a way to attach a "some rights reserved" copyright to your creative works. It also provides a simple way to clear other's content for use on your site, art work, or publication. It's seems like licensing of creative works should be included in all content creation coursework (photography, web design, digital graphics, etc).
  

Tags: Work Literacy, injenuity, Creative Commons, IT Careers, ACM

Links and Resources: September 3rd, 2008

When one teaches, two learn.
– Robert Half

On with the links.

• Deb Perelman over at ZDnet.com adds her 2 cents on why tech jobs possibilities remain good as employment starts to erode in other sectors.
  
• Jim Lanzalotto draws the same conclusion in a ComputerWorld piece titled Despite recession talk, it's still a good time to be in IT. You'll find a number of comments that don't necessarily agree with him and you should take a look at them too. I like the one where the guy says he'd tell his kids to join the circus rather than go into Science, Technology Engineering and Math (STEM). Okay ... there certainly aren't any foreigners in circus acts or any really popular circuses from foreign countries.
  
• Here are a couple of links related to the cost of college. The first is from the Everett Herald's James McCusker entitled Can we afford higher education's external costs. In brief, the debt students accumulate changes their behavior after graduation (a dentist won't practice in a rural area, for instance). McCusker asks if society can afford that externalization of the high cost of college. In the current issue of Money magazine, they ask "Is college still worth the price". Short answer is yes, with a maybe. Long answer is no, with a however.
  
• In a recent post on podcasting I mentioned that LibriVox provides free audio books for works in the public domain. If eBooks are more your thing, you'll want to check out the The Gutenberg Project. Concept is the same, works are in the public domain so they can be made available free. Looks like they have sheet music, audio books and DVDs too. Also look at the Internet Archives, which is a wealth of all sorts of public domain/open source materials. You can download episodes of You Bet You Live with Groucho Marx (no, he wasn't the leader of the Soviet Union, that was Harpo).
• Wordle is an internet based application that creates a word cloud of your blog, feed or text string. A word cloud graphically represent the frequency of word use through font size, placement, color, etc. Here's an example of one I created of the Advisory Bored on September 2nd. What can you do with it? I have no idea. The last link is is suppose to be fun. Were you planning on building a Teddy Bear that is interfaced with your computer?
  

Post script: I was finishing the Wordle link at midnight in Seattle. At that very moment Jeff Utecht, a teacher at a school in Thailand tweets (that's a Twitter message) that his U Tech Tips blog has a post from Dennis Harter, a teacher in Bangkok, called Wordle - DIY Word Clouds. Dennis suggests a couple of interesting uses for Wordle. That's globalization and the internet at work for you.

Tags: Education, IT Jobs, College Costs, James McCusker, Money Magazine, LibriVox, Internet Archives, Gutenberg Project, Jeff Utecht, U Tech Tips, Dennis Harter, Wordle

What's the frequency Kenneth

I share my blogroll on this site so everyone can see what I am reading, but I haven't been so good with my podcasting list. I'm a big fan of podcasts and, while I don't get to listen as much as I like, I do get through 3 to 5 every week.

Podcasts are digital audio files distributed via the internet using syndication (like RSS is used to distribute this blog). The term is generally considered to be a contraction of iPod and broadcast, but it is not limited to iPods. I listen to podcasts on my iPods, on my computers, on my Blackberry and on my work smartphone (yes, only work related podcasts there). I use iTunes as my primary tool for podcast subscription, particularly for those I want directly sent to my iPod, but I have also used an open source tool called Juice.

So here's my list, in no particular order:

• TED Talks - you've seen me reference a few TED Talks video's in previous posts. Really thought provoking stuff.
  
• The Teacher's Podcast - Dr. Kathy King and Mark Gura host this show for teacher professional development. Not being a teacher, the topics aren't always relevant to me, but it's always fun to listen to their banter. Listen carefully and you might hear a little Bichon barking in the background.
  
• Science Friday - a NPR show that focuses on a wide variety of science topics every Friday. I like that I can cherry pick just the segments I want to hear without having to listen to the whole 2-hour broadcast. As you might guess, there is a boatload of good NPR and PBS content for download. You can browse the Podcast section of the iTunes store or go to a resource like Podcast Alley.
  
• Sketicality - Discovery Institute fans can skip this one. It's the official podcast of Skeptics magazine and it reminds me to think critically. It's mainly an interview show with some news briefs and a little opinion.
  
• Radio Sweden - one of my brother-in-laws lives in Sweden with his family, so I like to stay in touch with what's happening in Stockholm. Many other countries have the same, which could be a useful tool for researching other countries and world events.
  
• The Chillcast with Anji Bee - It's a pod-safe music show featuring Anji Bee, who sounds like she just stepped out of early 70's FM radio (anyone remember KZAM). Even if the music isn't your cup of tea, the issues around legal licensing of music for podcasts, blogs, etc is a great topic for students to investigate. You might want to start your next content creation class with a trip to Creative Commons or Ioda Promonet.
  
• Dan Carlin's Hardcore History - No, the history of hardcore is something completely different. I just learned about this site and haven't listened much. Dan Carlin comes at this as a fan of history, not a historian. I really enjoyed his interview with James Burke, host of great PBS shows like Connections and The Day the Universe Changed (now that what some serious education).
  
• The MedicCast - I highlighted this one in a previous post. Created by the podmedic, Jamie Davis, I listen to the show to learn terminology of the Medics that I work with. There are a lot of professional-to-professional podcasts out there, which provide a great resource for students interested in a field.
  
• Technet Radio - is a product education source from Microsoft about Microsoft technology. I really should be listening to MSDN's Channel 9, however. Technet is more infrastructure and MSDN is for programmers.
  

Also, let me suggest that creating podcasts (audio-only, or with video) is a powerful educational tool. I mean really, with podcasting, YouTube, instant messaging and email is there a reason to have "snow days" anymore. There are several small scale recording devices that capture your audio and transfer it to a computer. A free software package like Audacity does the same and can be paired up with an inexpensive microphone or wireless mic (I picked one up at Radio Shack for under $65) for recording lectures or interviews. Mac users can use Garage Band. Phone interviews can be captured directly from Skype. Oh, and you'll need a place to store your podcasts. iTunes U provides such as source for schools and districts, at a fee. There are free sources, but generally they are wide open, so you've got some trade-offs to make.

Okay, one last audio source and I'll leave you alone. LibriVox isn't a podcast site, but it is a source of free audio books of works that are now in the public domain, which includes many of the classics (I've been considering Moby Dick). Also, they are looking for volunteers to read chapters of these books. Might be a great service learning project for that student with an interest in the theater, radio, etc.

Tags: Education, Podcasting,

Links and Resources: August 19th, 2008

Education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire.
– W.B. Yeats

and with that, let me toss out a few interesting tidbits:

• Son of Citation Machine helps you build a proper citation in various formats (MLA, Chicago, etc). You pick the format, source type and then fill in the form. Son of Citation Machine returns a properly formatted citation.
• My recent post on effective communication reminded me of a set of stories from Morning Edition on Email. Titled The Email Age, there are ten stories ranging from email embarrassments to information overload.
• You might remember a post from a few months back on computer science and creativity. I talked about captchas, those blurry letters and number you retype to prove you are a human being. NPR has had two radio pieces this summer on captchas in general and the recaptcha project specifically. Turning Verification Codes into Books was featured on the show Day to Day and Web Security Words Help Digitize Old Books was featured on All Things Considered last week.
• Network World ran a piece on the networking skills gap that is emerging. New areas of networking are becoming in demand (Voice over IP, Wireless) and many networking people were drawn into security over the last few years. Could be an area for retraining that community college programs can focus on. As with any prediction from a trade journal or research firm, your mileage may vary (YMMV).
• Computerworld is running an article called IT Careers in the Cloud, discussing how IT roles will change as some or all of the applications get moved to a hosted model. A hosted model is one in which a vendor hosts the application and data, and that application is made available to the users via the web. It is sometimes called Cloud Computing (the internet represented as a cloud shape in network diagrams), utility computing, software as a service or hosted computing.
  
• The Employment Disconnect in CIO Insight asks whether the it is possible for there to be both a shortage of skilled workers and a cadre of IT professionals that can't find work. The author thinks there is and I agree. This is, in my opinion, the real opportunity and challenge for community colleges. Experienced professionals often need just a few, targeted, specialized classes that give them extensive hands-on experience with a technology or technique. No degrees, no certificates, no "for Dummies" books as the text.
• Your Degree may be the Last Thing That Gets You a Job argues that several skills, like communication and team work, are more important to academic ability, unless it directly relates to the job at hand. Although this is a UK study, the findings seem to be consistent with others I've read and posted here.
• High-Tech Job Growth Heats Up New York, Seattle gives some stats on the job market locally for high-tech workers. Stats are a little stale, they are for 2006, but it does point to some recent data too. Things are changing and those numbers may not remain as rosy. Still, right now I'd rather be a network administrator than a house framer.
• and something a little more light-hearted - How 2.0: Make a Twittering Teddy Bear. This video shows you how to modify a talking teddy bear to interface with your computer and speak all your Twitter tweets. Even if you don't know what Twitter is (come on, Google it) and have no intention of ever building the Six Million Dollar Bear, you'll like this one.

It's the end of the summer so I'd like all the teachers to take a deep cleansing breath/margarita. See, doesn't that feel better.

High School Confidential

In a recent post I noted that this area has a number of high-skilled, well-paid jobs that only require a high school diploma. Lumping the machinists and plumbers in with Chairman of the Board at Microsoft is fun and hopefully surprising enough to create an idea that's made to stick.

Over the past couple of months I've notice a number of articles, commentaries and radio pieces around the skilled trades. Many of them point out that there is a looming employment shortfall due to the high number of retirements and the low number of people entering the trades. School come in for some blame for over-emphasizing college for everyone.

Without further adieu, here are your links:

1. Snohomish grad Brian Harbeck is skipping college and heading off to a precision machining apprenticeship program. The Herald article describes how his father maybe following in his footsteps.
   
2. Arlington manufacturing businesses partnered with the school district to develop a career center for machinist and skilled trades.
3. Rosemary Brester from Hobart Machined Products wrote a guest commentary on the need for stronger math skills for all students, not just those going on to college.
   
4. Still another Herald article on the concern over passing the WASL discouraging students from attending vocational programs such as at Sno-Isle tech skills center.
5. KUOW ran a two-part piece (part 1, part 2) on skilled trades, worker shortages and the role of high schools.

Tags: Everett Herald, Sno-Isle Tech Skills Center , Rosemary Brester, KUOW, Brian Harbeck

Drum (blog)roll please .....

and the winners are Andy, Liz and Tom.

The blogroll over on the right-hand column is a listing of my favorite blogs built dynamically from my feedreader account, Bloglines. Actually, the list is of my top tier blogs, the ones I'm actively reading on a regular basis. I also have a category for blogs that I am reviewing and considering for top tier status, which I hid from the blogroll. This is my minor leagues and there is a good chance you won't notice when one gets called up to the big leagues. Over the last couple of weeks I've added three blogs that I would like to highlight:

1. Andy's Teaching and Learning Blog comes to us from an accounting instructor at Edmonds CC. Andy posts links and resources with little additional commentary, unlike many bloggers. As you approach the end of the school year I would highly recommend you review his recommended links on grading exams from last December.
   
2. The Power of Educational Technology comes to us from Liz Davis an instructional technology specialist in Wellesley, MA. In addition to her blogging she has produced a number of useful screencasts that show you how to use tools like Flock and Google Reader which she has posted at her YouTube channel. You can also follow her on Twitter here.
3. Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog comes to us from, yeah you guessed it, Thomas P.M. Barnett (that wasn't hard to figure out was it). This is not an educational blog, but it maybe an interesting resource for current events, political science, world events and other such courses of study. His book, The Pentagon's New Map, lays out a different different direction for the US and the Pentagon in the post-Cold War, post-9/11 world. If you have 25 minutes you might want to start with his TEDtalks presentation from February 2005.

Enjoy.

Tags: Andy's Teaching and Learning Blog, Liz Davis, Thomas P.M. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map, Edmonds Community College

Links and Resources: April 25, 2008

Some light reading for your weekend:

• Arkansas school has 11-year old IT department. Let me rephrase that, an Arkansas school's IT department is an 11-year old. Jon Penn took over the IT role when the last admin disappeared suddenly and the job went to the school's librarian, Jon's mom. I first read about this at Engadget, but I like the Network World article better because of the 8 minute podcast interview. And before you use this to highlight your student's shortcomings (as compared to an 11-year old), ask yourself whether Jon would be allowed this non-traditional learning opportunity at your school or district. Yeah, I didn't think so.
  
• Workforce readiness crisis. This article from November of 2006 highlights the findings of a study called The Workforce Readiness Report Card. The key take-away is the 21st century skill set that business thinks are important, and lacking, for students to bring to the workforce. What I find interesting is that the business skill set for the future looks an awful lot like a well-rounded education.
  

I get a email digest of tech career news from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) every couple of weeks. I think you can get it, even if you aren't an ACM member, by going here. The following links came from the most recent ACM CareerNews Alert.

• How to turn an IT internship into an IT job. Title pretty tells the whole story. It's a list of thing to do, and don't do, at your internship job.
• Companies get more savvy with internships to find next-gen IT workers. Highlights the use of internships at specific big-name IT companies.
  
• 5 IT skills that won't boost your salary. A slightly different take on skill sets - what's not hot.
• Editorial: Pro or parasite? I've mention the IT skills shortage debate before and this article discusses a few of the key issues. More important, it shows that there is not agreement, even among CIO's, on this topic.
• Generation Y still wants it all. How dare these kids want to work 40 hours, get training and have a life outside of work. Why in my day .. blah, blah, blah .. uphill both ways ..blah, blah, blah .. and just happy to have it.
  

Where can I sign up to become a Gen Y?

Tags: Jon Penn, Workforce Readiness, ACM, Internship, IT Skills, IT Skills Shortage, Generation Y

You can't beat free

Last night at the Everett school district technology advisory board meeting we were discussing the development of some new programming classes. I reminded everyone of a site for high school computer science instructors that I had posted some time ago. Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) is an organization that supports K-12 teachers in the computing disciplines. It is an offshoot of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) which is one of the best known and most respected academic and scientific computing societies. CSTA has a variety of resources, model curriculum and teacher development programs (check their fact sheet for more details).

In addition to CSTA, their is a growing movement of open courseware, much like open source software. You might want to start at the Open Courseware Consortium. Here is what they have to say about the topic:

An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.

Click their USE link and you will see a listing of schools from around the global that have published course content free for your use in your programs. The best known of these is MIT's OpenCourseWare site. Yes, there are materials, notes and exams for over 1,800 MIT courses available at the site.

But wait....there's more! If you order in the next 10 minutes you'll get access to the MIT OpenCourseWare Highlights for High School, which focuses on that content most useful for high schools students and teachers.

Hopefully all these resources will make the job of building new or expanding existing coursework a little easier for you.

Tags: CSTA, MIT OpenCourseWare, Open Courseware Consortium, Everett School District

College Bound Scholarship due June 1

June 1st is the deadline for 8th graders to sign-up for Washington State's College Bound scholarship program. If you aren't working with 7th and 8th graders yourself, I am hoping you will pass this on to those in your district who are. The details are at the HEC board site, but here's the overview:

This four-year scholarship covers the cost of college tuition, fees and books for low-income students who sign a pledge in 7th or 8th grade promising to graduate from high school and to demonstrate good citizenship. This program provides hope and incentive for students and families who otherwise might not consider college as an option because of its cost.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: how is this not a good thing? Oh, I'm sure there is some fine print, but it really addresses the need to keep kids engaged and to give them a different vision for their future. If we want more college graduates and more high-skilled non-college workers, then they are going to have to come from the ranks of those now falling through the cracks.

I want to thank Kelly at Rep. Liz Loomis' (D-44th) for this information. I posted an entry on my No Sno U blog Saturday that was appreciative of Rep. Loomis' work to support high-school graduation and non-college bound training like apprenticeships. As in the past, I heard right back from her or her office (who says good manners are a thing of the past) asking that I share this with the Advisory Bored readers.

Okay people, let's see if we can't get the word out on this one.

Tags: Washington College Bound Scholarship, Liz Loomis, Washington HEC Board, No Sno U

Links and Resources: April 11, 2008

• Web Work in the Era of Free attempts to address how the web worker remains viable in an environment where more and more stuff is "free".
  
• Okay, this is a fun one. DIY kit lets houseplants Twitter when they need water describes how a group modified a plant water meter to send a tweet when it needs water.
• Zotero is a Firefox browser extension to help you research and cite references on the web. I don't use it, but there seems to be a lot of folks who really like it for academic work. Sounds like a good tool for the college-bound student.
• The post A Path to Becoming a Literate Educator is a Dave Warlick's 12 steps to becoming literate in the tools of 21st century learning.
  

Creativity and computer science

If you listened to the NPR piece on computer science education in my Where have all the children gone posting you will know that computer science wants to change its image as a bunch of guys sitting around coding in a dark room. I'm no computer scientist, just a boring old business programmer, but I'm always in awe of the creativity of those that dig deep into the bit stream. Let me share a story.

CAPTCHA is method in computing to determine if the "user" is a person or some automated program. You'll probably recognize a CAPTCHA as the requirement to type in the numbers and letters you see in an image before getting a free email account or posting a blog comment. Since current computer systems can't read those images, if you type in the right answer you must be a person.

Well that's kind of creative, but what's really interesting is what Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is doing. There are numerous projects underway to advance human knowledge by digitizing books from before the age of computers and making them freely available on the web. They do this by scanning the pages and having a computer convert the image of words into text using optical character recognition (OCR). Unfortunately not all words can be interrupted by computers so a human must do that. Hmmm, that sound almost like a CAPTCHA.

Some smart people at CMU decided that they could harness the collective power of some 60 million CAPTCHA's solved every day by creating a free service called reCAPTCHA. It gives a two-word CAPTCHA, one word is known so they can validate you as a person and the second is an unknown word from the digitizing project that needs human interpretation (read more here). Every time you solve their CAPTCHA you are stopping spam and helping to convert a book to digital format.

reCAPTCHA is a creative way for you to donate your time to a good cause, in productive, 3 second increments. Similarly, projects like SETI@Home and Rosetta@Home borrow your computer's unused processing power to help find extra-terrestrial life or understand the structure of proteins, respectively (Rosetta us hosted by the UW). Both use BIONIC, an open-source software product to facilitate volunteer grid computing. People around the world download the BIONIC software and sign-up to help a computing problem. When they leave their machine idle, BIONIC goes out, retrieves some work, processes it and then returns the results to the host. The user has donated their unused computing power at little or no cost to themselves. The project gets vast computing resources for free.

Which brings us back to computer science and creativity. The problems being solved here aren't computer problems. The real problems are a lack of time, resources or money. A student's computer science training gives her the analytical skills to identify the problem and the programming skills to implement a solution. In between is creativity.

Tags: reCAPTCHA, SETI@Home, Rosetta@Home

Are you inexperienced?

Microsoft, in addition to the student 2 business (s2b) portal I mentioned recently, are also releasing a free suite of development tools for college and high school students in science, technology, engineering and match (STEM) studies.

In a February 19th press release, Microsoft announce the DreamSpark student program to give away the developer tools to college students in 11 countries now, with intention to expand the program to other countries and to high-school students throughout the year. DreamSpark includes, among other things, Visual Studio, XNA game studio, Expressions designer, SQL Server relational database and Windows Server. Microsoft recommends that students check out the Channel8 site for details and availability.

Channel8 is the student equivalent of Channel9, a site for developers that includes wikis, forums, blogs, videocasts, podcasts, etc. Well worth a few minutes for students to check out the site and the tools. Free is a good price.

Tags: DreamSpark, Channel8, Microsoft

Are you experienced?

In a March 5th press release, Microsoft and Experience announced the creation of a student to business (S2B) portal that connects Microsoft partner companies with students looking for entry-level jobs and internships. Since I'm neither, I'll leave it to instructors and students to check it out. If someone learns a little more about the site, please post some comments here.

Tags: Microsoft, Internships

Links and Resources: March 20, 2008

How about some light reading about the IT profession and career outlook:

• Hot Jobs in IT for 2008 summarizes findings in a Robert Half's 2008 Salary Survey. They expect starting salaries in IT to rise 5% in 2008.
  
• Web 2.0: The skills behind the buzzword talks about the skills and tools an individual would need to support the read/write web. Not real in-depth, but it does use buzzwords to explain the buzzword (meta-buzzwords).
  
• Woes Aside, Some Businesses Expect More IT Hiring indicates that although not stellar, there should still be growth in IT hiring in 2008. Top areas include network administration, windows administration, desktop support and database administration.

[A quick note on critical thinking and information literacy. In case you thought "if three different articles say the job outlook is good, it must be so", notice that all three quote the Robert Half survey. That doesn't mean it isn't true, you just want to be skeptical of such things.]

• Help wanted: Tech companies feel skilled labor shortage documents the large number of IT jobs in IT companies that are going unfilled. Microsoft has the most openings, which it can't fill due to a lack of qualified workers. [Note that this tech shortage is much debated as in separate pro and con articles in InformationWeek.]
• IT career paths you Never Dreamed of talks about how the changing nature of IT in the organization is changing job titles, responsibilities and organizational hierarchy. If nothing else, it does highlight that IT is not for people who want to plop down in a chair and be told what to do everyday for 35 years.
  

Where have all the children gone?

You might enjoy a couple of pieces about computer science education and employment from the March 12th National Public Radio (NPR) news show All Things Considered. The first segment, Computer Science Course Enrollment Dips in U.S., describes the on-going problem of a lack of students in computer science. Ever since the dot com meltdown enrollment in computer science programs have drop dramatically, even as demand for the jobs has rebounded. You will often hear reference to high-demand areas of study, but the problem is that they are in demand by employers, not students. Perhaps the most troubling problem has been the participation of women (and, although not mentioned, non-Asian minority males) in these programs.

The second segment, Bill Gates Targets Visa Rules for Tech Workers, is an interview with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on his call for reform of immigration and increase of H1-B visas available for international students. Although the interview focuses only on the visa issue, his congressional testimony earlier that day dealt with US global competitiveness in technology. His testimony is available here (the first of four points deals with education which you will find starting on page 4 of the document).

Please keep in mind that not every IT/IS job requires a computer science degree, although reading through the jobs ads you might think so. Plenty of people, perhaps most, in corporate setting don't have computer science backgrounds, myself included. That's not to say that Microsoft doesn't need them, they do. It's just that every student in American shouldn't feel as if they need to take that more rigorous course of study to work in technology fields.

Take Bill Gates for instance. He got his degree in, oh that's right, he's a college drop-out. ;-)

Tags: IT Career, Bill Gates, Computer Science

Links and Resources: February 24th, 2008

• My post on Green IT discussed how we need to measure and monitor power to make sure we really save money/environment. In this video clip from Microsoft Technet someone describes the process and tools they used to do just that.
  
• Although males make up the majority of the IT workforce, studies show that it is females that are responsible for content creation on the web. This NY Times article talks about young women on the web.
• Eva at the Education Virtually Anywhere blogs about informal science lecture series held in pubs and cafes in Seattle called Science on Tap.
• Glen Hiemstra over at Futurist.com blogged about future proofing your college. Among others things, the campus may provide residential and social context while learning will take place here, there and everywhere. Glen, who is based in Kirkland, did a great presentation on the future of education in 2000 at the UW. The show is still available online at UWTV here.

A new blog: No Sno U

I suppose it's a little late in the process, but I have just started a blog called No Sno U. As you might guess from the title, I'm not a big fan of the proposed 4-year university in Snohomish county. Anything that takes money away from education and moves it to construction is a bad deal from my perspective. Feel free to stop on by if you would like to discuss how we might improve technical education in the county for a little less than a billion dollars and a little sooner than 20 years.

Tags: Snohomish County, University of Washington, branch campus