21st century computer literacy

In the last month I have attend two advisory committee meetings for career and technical education for local school districts and in both the question of computer basics classes came up.  One district had canceled their basic computer skills class, the other about to.  Somewhere along the line someone - student, administrator, parent, upstanding citizen - decided the millennials were born knowing how to use a computer (my take on that in my post Digital Naivete).  One district appears to be getting a basics class back because it is can be taken for University of Washington credit while in high school (see iSchool in the high schools). 

The point of this blog is to carry on the advisory committee discussions beyond the two-hour meeting and to gain more feedback from a broader audience.  So I'm looking for those of you out in the workforce or teaching post-secondary to share your wisdom with instructional staff on the topic of computer skills for all students (not just those interested in technical fields). 

Let me get this started with a few thoughts of my own on a standalone computer literacy class in high school.

• It's never to late - I would agree that high school students shouldn't need a basic computer literacy class, that they should have gained those skills before they reach high school. If, however, they don't have those skills then high schools must have a remedial class, just as they do for Math or English. Otherwise the problem, and the costs, just gets passed to colleges or employers.  By the way ... let's stop debating whether digital natives know everything about computers or not.  Someone needs to establish a baseline skill set, develop an assessment and make all students take the test.  If they fail, welcome to Computers 101. I'm tired of arguing about the measurable.
  
• Evolution of essential skills - As with the broad-based adoption of any technology, what you needed to know to use computers ten years ago is different than what you need to know today, and what you'll need to know ten years from now will be different still.  If a Computers 101 class is teaching config.sys files, well it is irrelevant and should be dropped.  
• Computer drivers license - To carry the last point a step further, we want to teach the computer equivalent of Drivers Ed, not Auto Shop.  The general computer user needs to know how to responsibly use the computer (anti-virus software, cyber-bullying, file management) and how to use applications.  The don't need to know how to rebuild a transmission. 
  
• Information literacy - As we move away from teaching the hardware and internals, aren't we really focusing on information literacy instead of computer literacy?  Let's use file management as an example.  We need to teach creating directories and maintaining files, but that's just the mechanics.  If you look at any hard drive, particularly a shared network drive, you will see a complete disaster.  People can create directories and copy files alright.  What they can't do is categorize information so that it is retrievable.  Categorization is an information topic, not a computer topic. 
  
• Teach in context - Finally, it seems to me that those skills - responsible use, applications, information literacy - are best taught, practiced and evaluated within the context of other types of coursework, not in a standalone computer class.  In my post What's the Word I suggest ten things everyone should know about MS Word.  It's my opinion that those ten items should be taught, practiced and evaluated in a language arts class, not a technology class.  I learned to write with a pencil in an English class, not in a pencil class.

Okay guys, what are your thoughts?  What are the basic computer and information skills everyone needs?  Is high school too late for that class? Should we use a standalone class or should it be embedded throughout the curriculum? 

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Business' case for teaching with social media

We finally got going with social media at work this year. Nothing earth-shattering mind you, but we rolled out our first Twitter feeds to update people on construction delays and city news, as well as our Facebook page. Of course no good deed goes unpunished, so adopting social media created it's own set of problems. The record management types freaked out because a public record might be created. Information technology (IT) people like me get freak out over information security and bandwidth consumption issues. Finally, management in general freaks out 'cause staff maybe watching YouTube videos instead of doing work.

One option is to restrict and monitor staff's access to social media sites. Unfortunately, that requires both time and money from the IT department, resources that could be better spent on other projects. It also keeps people away from useful tools for work, whether for information gathering, training, communicating or collaboration. YouTube, for instance, has a wealth of helpful training videos and presentations. Many companies post their training materials out there instead of on their own servers. So if we restrict access then we will need to have exceptions for business need. That requires even more IT resources. It also turns IT into the bad guy.

If we look deeper, however, we will see that the adoption of social media tools in business is about more than software. We are talking about a fairly significant change to the work environment - the types of work, our roles, our relationships to customers, peers and managers. Work is more collaborative and information intensive, but that information isn't necessarily known in advance. Further, the boss or team leader is no longer responsible for uncovering new information to share with everyone else. In addition, communication across the organization and outside the organization is far less structured and hierarchical.

What this means is that business needs individuals who can use social media tools outside the firewalls of the business without spending two hours watching videos of water skiing squirrels or posting the design specifications of the company's newest product for everyone to see. Now if we just had some sort of societal institution that could prepare young people for this new world in work, academic and civic life.

Oh, right, school.

So there you go school reformers, there's your business mandate for reform. I need employees that can work collaboratively to gather information and share knowledge, that get their job done without me detailing every step and communicate effectively with customers and the CEO. And they need to do it using social media tools all without stopping to check out the newest OK Go video.

I'm going to expand on this topic with your help in the coming months, but I'd like to leave you with a few last thoughts:

1. Don't socialize, collaborate. For most people social media implies "fun" instead of "with people". As a result, social media is a non-starter merely because of the association with playtime. Business tool vendors position their toolsets as collaborative, not social, and school reformers should consider doing the same. Further, our discussion of collaboration shouldn't begin and end with Facebook and Twitter. We should be discussing Wetpaint, Ning, Delicious and Diigo instead.
   
2. Structure is instructive. The structure of school - roles, relationships and rewards - teach us as much as the content of any given class. Ever take a class titled "Make your boss happy and you'll get a raise"? No, but you learned the lesson didn't you? It is not enough to adopt collaborative tools within the current structure. The very structure of schools must be changed. (Did you notice the title of this post was "teaching with social media", not "teaching social media".)
3. Give 'em enough rope. Should classrooms be built without windows since students can look out and daydream instead of their math assignment? Okay, no is the obvious answer. We build classrooms with windows and discipline students with, among other things, bad grades if they don't do their work. Unfortunately, teachers, like many business executives, want to place to the burden of student/staff online misbehavior at the feet of IT. Do the student a favor, if they spend all day on Facebook, flunk them. Just leave the internet turned on for everyone else.
   

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

Giving them the first degree

So here is the story, about a year ago a group of 10 Washington State Patrol (WSP) troopers were accused of having received college diplomas from questionable institutions (i.e., a degree mill). Troopers, you see, get 2% pay increase for earning a 2 year associates degree and a 4% increase for earning a 4 year bachelors degree (what a coincidence that the percent pay increase matches the number of years in the degree). An investigation last winter indicated that they had received some basic approval from the human resources staff and would, therefore, not be prosecuted for criminal offenses. In just the last couple of days, however, the WSP has recommend firing the 8 individuals remaining on the force. [go here to find a list of articles in Puget Sound media outlets covering the story.]

How did this all come to light? No doubt it was because of their sub-par performance when compared to troopers with legitimate degrees, right? No, of course not. A degree mill in Eastern Washington was busted and it served government employees, so they worked back through the list of employee degrees (ah, the old employee-degree table) and there are your alleged cheaters.

Does that make you upset at the troopers? Not me. The troopers want to earn more money - who doesn't - and the best way to do it is to get a degree. Their employer doesn't really seem to care if it is a legit degree and since there doesn't appear to be a direct relationship between degree and job performance why kill yourself. That is, unless you like school.

What drives me crazy is that their employer, my government, gives out pay increases for things that should eventually lead to better performance, instead of for the performance improvement itself. I mean, if the degree really makes a difference then it should show up in the individual's performance, right? And, if their performance improves without a degree, shouldn't they get a raise too?

It might be useful to ask ourselves what we really want when we make a college degree a requirement for employment (or for a pay raise). I think what we expect is that the degree certifies that a person has gained a set of skills, knowledge, experiences and personal connections that we feel makes for a "better" person. Great, but what if it doesn't? A degree is normally granted based upon the accumulation of credit hours from a disparate set of general studies and program specific classes. I never had an assessment to determined I was a good critical thinker, did you? I am sure, however, that there are those who think my time on the banks of the Mountlake Cut ensure that I am.

Worse still, by requiring a degree in addition to the skills/knowledge/experiences we specifically exclude individuals who can demonstrate they have gained those skills/knowledge/experiences through means that didn't lead to the granting of a degree. It sends the clear and unmistakable message that acquiring a piece of paper that says we know something is more important than knowing something. Why are we surprised that we end up with degree mills, people buying term papers and lying on resumes?

I fear we are creating a college degree bubble that will, like housing and tech stock bubbles before it, burst leaving us worse off, both individually and as a society. Student loan debt is just the first and most obvious sign of trouble ahead. Post-secondary education is an absolutely vital part of our society, but the ascendancy of the degree to near deity status is making the system weaker, not stronger. The challenge is for employers, public and private, to back away from the edge of this cliff.

Postscript: On August 30th James McCusker, the economics columnist for the Everett Herald, wrote a column titled "Focus on skill, not school, for hiring". In it he takes on the "relentless marketing of academic credentials as a product". He suggests that we need to focus on the real requirements of the job and not add unnecessary educational requirements simply to reduce the pool of applicants. The article is right on the mark and well worth the 5 minutes you'll spend reading it.

Technorati Tags: Washington State Patrol, Post-Secondary Education, Degree Mills

Digital Naiveté

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a study from North Carolina Central University, which finds that college student's perception of their own skills with Microsoft Office falls short of their actual performance with the tool. 75% of students indicated they had a high proficiency with MS Word and most were able to complete the basic tasks, but they could complete only half the moderate task and none of the advanced tasks. Excel was worse. 69% of students indicate an average proficiency but the average student could only do two of the basic tasks and none of the moderate or advanced tasks. PowerPoint is the one tool where they seem to correctly assess their own capability.

So let me summarize for my business and IT brethren:

• don't get rid of your help desk yet
• don't get rid of your Intro to Word and Excel online training classes yet
  
• don't be surprised if you continue to see documents where the space bar is the primary tool for indentation
• get ready for more inane PowerPoint presentations (when all you got is a hammer ....)
  

I'll leave the rigorous peer review to someone with a little more time on their hand, but the numbers sure sound consistent with what I hear from technology teachers on the school advisory boards where I serve. They say that a large percentage of students in high school simply don't have the basic computer and software skills (computer literacy) they need in the work place. Oh, don't worry, they can text and download music no problem. It's things like adding a network printer or changing page orientation to landscape that confuse them.

This is not, however, a rant against those students. I don't expect them to know what they need to know with any great accuracy at this point in their lives. I certainly did not when I was 17, 18, and 19. This is really a rant against parents, administrators and teachers who give these students a free pass simply because they're digital natives - a term I despise. The teachers I talk to say that students are not interested in taking those classes and that their parents fully support that because they use the computer all the time. Add to that the test-crazy education system we have established and if it ain't on test, why bother studying it.

So this is the point in the rant where I suggest how we interject computer literacy into the basic school curriculum, right? Not going to happen this time. I went to school at a time when paper and pencil were the only things available and to college when the electric typewriter was cutting edge. Somehow I figured out how to do justification, hanging indents and table inserts without the help of the Edmonds School District. I'm sure that today's students can do the same.

I would, however, suggest that businesses start adding a basic computer literacy test as a requirement for all positions that require computer work (which is most these days). We spend way too much money on basic computer and software skills and there is no reason that should be required with the coming generation (they are digital natives, after all). Colleges and Universities might want to add it to their admissions requirements for the same reason. If students and their parents are really concerned they can look at programs like the SAM Challenge or ICDL.

Technorati Tags: Computer Literacy, Microsoft Office, IT Skills, North Carolina Central University