Growth
Let's talk about growth.
Personal growth, professional growth, becoming lifelong learners. These things are crucial to our time.
Personal growth, professional growth, becoming lifelong learners. These things are crucial to our time.
Technology in our schools and workplaces has become a norm, rather than an exception, within the past 25 years. As the pace of change increases with new opportunities, tools, and methods of learning, so does our expectation for performance and development. The time of being a content-matter expert appears to be shifting toward a time of learning experts, with the skills of inquiry, experimentation, adaptation and collaboration providing the foundation for constantly changing personal and career expectations.
To affect change, develop our communities and ourselves, one needs to be constantly growing. To be constantly growing, we need to be constantly learning.
These "learning skills" are sometimes considered as technology-related or as aspects of information literacy, with prospective job descriptions to match. With current definitions, a huge portion of future jobs will be labeled as "technology" jobs simply because they use tools that require constant evolution and growth. Technology is one of the leading proponents of new learner culture, providing efficacy tools and access to information on previously unprecedented levels. Let me share this infographic (again):
Projected growth in computer science jobs in the USA. (Source Data)
It's indicative of the fact that not just new jobs, but also traditional ones, must change to survive in these times. Future employers are probably going to be begging for information literate workers who can adapt to new programming languages, digital workspaces and communication methods while their focus is on the job at hand, not on doing constant training courses. The demand already appears to be increasing, albeit carrying some technology-specific job titles so far. If you're considering your finances, check out these numbers:
Top ten jobs with largest projected salary gains in the USA. (Forbes.com 2014)
The importance of throwing all this data at you on a Monday morning? Am I trying to convert you or your students/children into computer scientists? Never! (Well, maybe a little).
The point I endeavor to make is that a significant portion of the skills we need to become potent lifelong learners are information literacy skills, and that those skills are a foundation for academic and professional growth in children and adults alike. Technology education is not just skill development... it's about learning to be better learners. Information literacy skills are essential for the workplaces of the future, whether you are a programmer or not, and the more chances we have to develop them the better. Teaching the tools exclusively is a waste of time, a road to obsolescence. It is crucial that we learn to be better learners, to make better choices, and to never stop trying to better yourself and your community.
-M
