Ask Slashdot: What Tech Skills Do HS Students Need To Know Now? 302
heybiff writes: During summer months I deliver brief tech workshops to high school students as part of an enrichment program. Almost all of the students are average students pulled from non-magnet comprehensive high schools throughout our city. Make no mistake — these are not the students who have a love of technology and coding; many were coerced by excited parents or guidance counselors. After doing this for almost 10 years, I have found students have become considerably more comfortable with technology, and confident in their use, especially with smartphones and tablets being ubiquitous. Unfortunately, I also see a lot of basic knowledge and tech skills all but nonexistent. Moreover, students seem unaware that the tech they use daily even has any usefulness for academic activities. So what I put to you fellow Slashdotters is: What do students today realistically have to know to be successful in school? Which tech skills are still important and necessary, and which are gone the way of the typewriter? What misconceptions or outright lies have become so ingrained in young people's use of technology that they need to be addressed? Finally, the program puts laptops in students' hands, to give them a kickstart in being successful; what skills do they need to get the most out of the new hardware they were just given?
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Cursive (Score:5, Funny)
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Punjabi?
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that's a hoot considering where a ton of phishing, fraud, and telephone scams originate
or did you mean diligent crook work ethic?
Re:Cursive (Score:4, Interesting)
This may be funny, but see also the /. news earlier this day: /./microsoft-to-teachers-using-pens-and-paper-not-fair-to-students [slashdot.org]
Cursive does teach motor skills in your hands, eye-to-hand coordination etc. And writing is still a basic skill that's needed in every job that requires discussing complex ideas with others.
On OP's question "What do students today realistically have to know to be successful in school?" I would say that the skills I see lacking are reading, writing and basic math. Especially the first one will get you anywhere you want...
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They already do that--it's called Twitter.
None. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:None. (Score:5, Insightful)
Very much agree. When I went to school, it was all WordPerfect and Quattro Pro. For programming we did QBasic and HTML/Javascript. But it was using Netscape Navigator where people frequently used frames and document.layers. I basically had to forget a whole bunch of stuff to be able to relearn the current way to do things. I was lucky in the sense that the teachers at my highschool taught us how to figure out how to do stuff on our own by telling us to read the documentation or search around the menus to find the functionality we needed. Whatever they learn will be wrong by the time they get out into the work force. The best you can do is try to teach them how to figure things out for themselves.
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Well, when *I* went to school it was "IBM Selectric" and "Print Shop". Not the software "print shop", but a big room with a bunch of machines and lots and lots of movable type.
Yes, whatever they learn will be wrong by the time they get out in into the work force but part of learning is learning how to LEARN, if that makes sense...
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Luxury, sheer luxury! When I went to school we had to use shitty TRS-80s with fucking micro tape drives that were not much better than a cassette tape drive. You had to get kicked out of that school to get to the public school that at least had Apple IIs and a nice PDP11 to get anything done!
Next guy: Oh YEA?! We had to program our own logins in COBOL on a CDC6600 and we LIKED it like that!
Older guy: Fucking kids, I had to carry my own boxes of CRTubes uphill 5 miles to get time on my EDSAC2 to write code i
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You jest, but I was in high school before there were TRS-80's. The TRS-80 hit the streets about the time I was graduating....
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punchcards, ftw. just don't drop the stack before you get it to the feeder.
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Things have been changing for awhile: when I was in high school, we wrote code in C and FORTRAN, and even dabbled a bit with the old Hollerith code (think "punchcards"). On the plus side, we had Apple ][ e's and a very early version of (I think?) Word Perfect... it's was *all* CLI though, so it's not like we had much in the way of graphics.
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The concern isn't relearning (Score:4, Interesting)
Learning what is today's standard is fine even if 5 years from now it won't be. It plants basic principles that will assist students in learning the newer things. JS language and structure allows you to quickly jump into C, C++, C# because the base is the same.
HTML in the 90's is still valid today. The basic concept remains with added enhancements in the form of CSS, JS, Flash...
The most important thing in school is to learn how to learn. They do this by forcing students to be creative and resourceful.
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Agreed.
I would much prefer that a few long-discarded courses come back from the dead. Logic and Rhetoric stand out primarily among them; the former to help create better devs and sysadmins, the latter to help them better communicate needs and ideas to the PHB crowd. A little bit of philosophy couldn't hurt either, since anything to force kids to develop and use their own sense of creativity is rather vital IMHO.
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I think it is a case on where we shouldn't be teaching people how to operate technology. But to use technology to solve their problems.
Technology is a tool. When we are little kids, they show us how to operate the tool. When we get older we learn how to use the tools to create.
Most Information Technology Education is the equivalent of teaching someone how to hammer a nail. Where it should be taught on how to build a birdhouse. Where the hammer is only one of the tools out of many.
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20-year-old college students says to me yesterday: "I just got my first computer and I'm trying to figure out these files and directories and stuff."
Your personal experience is not universal.
Typing (Score:5, Insightful)
Please teach all kids how to type at least 70-80 wpm. It is a skill they will use forever.
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Re:Typing (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think a mind meld with computers will even be the desired input method ever. The QWERTY layout has been around for 140 years. I don't think there's any reason for it to change. There are other input methods, but nothing that matches the speed and consistency of a skilled typist. Remember, the keyboard is not simply a tool for entering English words. It let's us communicate all types of information with the computer. Simple key combinations can be used to express many different things to the computer. Also, I can type while looking out the window at the trees blowing in the wind and still get the correct output to the computer. I think that a computer trying to read our brain signals would get very confused with all the "noise" in our heads. They have enough trouble just trying to get speech recognition working in a quiet room.
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The QWERTY layout has been around for 140 years..
So, not as long as the horse and buggy? And this tells us something about its future?
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I don't think a mind meld with computers will even be the desired input method ever.
Ever? That's a pretty bold prediction.
The QWERTY layout has been around for 140 years.
So it will be around forever? Like trebuchet's and catapults?
I don't think there's any reason for it to change.
The only reason to change anything is that the new thing is better in some way.
There are other input methods, but nothing that matches the speed and consistency of a skilled typist.
That's the way it has been, so that's the way it will be forever?
Remember, the keyboard is not simply a tool for entering English words. It let's us communicate all types of information with the computer. Simple key combinations can be used to express many different things to the computer.
I'm not sure why you think a keyboard is the only input method capable of doing this. Certainly human minds are also capable of thinking thoughts other than English words, as they are the things ultimately controlling the keyboards.
. Also, I can type while looking out the window at the trees blowing in the wind and still get the correct output to the computer. I think that a computer trying to read our brain signals would get very confused with all the "noise" in our heads. They have enough trouble just trying to get speech recognition working in a quiet room.
Your brain sends different signals
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The QWERTY layout has been around for 140 years.
So it will be around forever? Like trebuchet's and catapults?
Just because you don't own one, doesn't mean others don't. Personally I like having siege engines in my backyard, although the ballista is my personal favorite.
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Very nicely put!
I would add that we now have the ability to just talk to the mic and have some parsing software write the words and punctuation for us, but that won't work in our lame open office space at work, nor do I want to wear out (or hear) my voice while I'm trying to think of things to type. Really, what's the one physical thing in a smart phone that cannot be bargained out; the on-screen keyboard. Mice? No need, keyboard? Hell yes!!1!
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I don't think a mind meld with computers will even be the desired input method ever.
Ever? That's a long time. Frankly I think we'll see cranial implants that allow computer access without a keyboard during this century.
Typing will be with us for a long time (Score:2)
Until pushing mechanical buttons to transfer symbols from a human to a machine becomes obsolete.
Not going to happen in my lifetime I think. What will replace it? Dictation? That's a skill you have to train and most people can't do it without a lot of difficulty. Plus nobody wants to dictate everything they are doing out loud. Brain interface? Wake me when we're talking about technologies that aren't science fiction. That falls into the possible but unlikely and certainly a long way off category.
There may be some kids that will use typing skills until they die (i.e. not forever), but more importantly I doubt that the qwerty keyboard will still be around in 100 years.
I can almost guarantee that we'll still be using querty keyboards in 100 years. I'd actually be shoc
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I could see QERTY disappearing within two decades. Machines reading (a small simple portion of ) mind already a reality.
Careful betting on future technology (Score:2)
I could see QERTY disappearing within two decades. Machines reading (a small simple portion of ) mind already a reality.
I don't. The brain "reading" machines we have are incredibly crude right now. Had you said 40 or more years I *might* agree that it's possible if unlikely and certainly not likely to eliminate qwerty keyboards. But I really don't see it happening any sooner than that. You also have to consider the creepiness factor. There are a LOT of people that are going to be seriously weirded out by the notion of having their brain "read" even if it is completely innocuous. Furthermore it's not clear at this time
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Oh hell, that happens with keyboards too. I've posted before that while working on a time crunch problem, the manager of my manager was hanging around and keeping his nose in her business. She was trying to type up a synopsis of the current status to email to *his* boss and he was continually asking her questions and pressuring her to hurry the solution up. Fortunately for her I was standing there to answer questions for her memo because in the middle of a sentence she wrote "fuck you". I leaned way ove
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And 20 years ago if I said people would be talking into their mobile phones for automated search and directions you'd say
"I don't. The cellular phone machines we have are incredibly crude right now..."
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Not going to happen in my lifetime I think. What will replace it? Dictation? That's a skill you have to train and most people can't do it without a lot of difficulty. Plus nobody wants to dictate everything they are doing out loud.
I never said anything about dictation.
Brain interface? Wake me when we're talking about technologies that aren't science fiction. That falls into the possible but unlikely and certainly a long way off category.
I specifically referenced controlling computers directly by thoughts. And in fact brain/machine interfaces are already a reality, they just aren't very advanced yet. I also specifically gave a lifetime for the death of the qwerty keyboard of 100 years (a long way off).
I can almost guarantee that we'll still be using querty keyboards in 100 years. I'd actually be shocked if we weren't.
I think some people will still be using them. Some people still use trebuchets (for trebuchet competitions). But tebuchets have disappeared as the dominant tool for their original intended use (warfare
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Until you can point at a device that enters text more efficiently than a keyboard, being able to type will remain an essential skill. You can't do that now, and frankly I don't see anything on the horizon that will. Magical mind-reading device might (or might not) do that, but we can worry about that when we have some.
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Agree one hundred percent, typing has been given short shrift. In 8th grade we had a whole year of typing on IBM Selectrics. In addition to touch typing we learned a lot about proper letter formats and things of that nature. I am sure they could throw in a lot of relevant stuff about word processing software, but they don't offer typing now- at least at my children's school.
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Please teach all kids how to type at least 70-80 wpm. It is a skill they will use forever.
The most valuable skill I learned in high school was typing. My mother was a good typist, having worked for the US Navy as a secretary during World War II--she had a portable typewriter at home. More than 60 years after having graduated from high school I still type every day, mostly on a Unicomp keyboard.
The basics (Score:5, Insightful)
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I guess I'm advantaged over today's kids because I grew up using WordPerfect 5.1, and we learned that using shortcut keys was basically the only way to get things done. The WordPerfect Keyboard Map [minuszerodegrees.net] sat at the top of every keyboard in my highschool. Sure you could do stuff with menus, but we learned on the first day of class that you should do as much as possible using hotkeys.
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WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, the most perfect word processing program ever developed. The amount of work one could easily accomplish with that program still surpasses anything we have today.
Those shortcut keys were fantastic and the guy(s) who thought of allowing 'Reveal Codes' should be given free beers whenever they are out.
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I think a lot of the productivity gains came from the lack of WYSIWYG support. When you can't actually see what the output is going to look like on paper, you spend a lot less time futzing around with the layout and a lot more time just typing up the document. The fact that it's so simple is what allows you to just get to work and get your job done. Also, there was no other programs running in the background. Which meant that there wasn't emails, chat messages, and other distractions constantly drawing y
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Yup, and it's frustrating dealing with people with this mindset. I had a woman who held up her deployment of Office 2013 because she was convinced that uninstalling 2010 would nuke all her stuff. It took myself,the IT director, her boss and her all sitting down and us saying multiple times that this was not the case. This woman just could not understand that her files were not "in the program" but in their own container on the disk. Separately she could manage what we were saying when it came to individual
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I blame Apple and the iPad at least in part for stuff like this. In the iPad world, if you remove an app, then your files associated with that app will indeed disappear and cease to exist. They've done a lot of work to try to make it appear like there is no file system. This creates huge problems when you want to share a file between 2 apps..
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Worse even is the transpaency of cloud applications.
For the OP, I'd have the students spend some time trying to do something productive while their laptop is offline. This will force them to learn what tools are actually on a computer and what's ephemeral internet content that could vanish anytime.
Oh, also, data friggin entry/transcription. Have them put new things in a list that has some strict formatting rules until they get it right. Have them move entries from a list in one format to a list in anothe
Two Word "Critical Thinking" (Score:5, Insightful)
They can figure out the rest.
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They can figure out the rest.
"Critical thinking" is a meaningless expression. The Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] contains 9 different definitions, many of which are contradictory. This is my favorite: "the commitment to the social and political practice of participatory democracy," which seems to imply that "critical thinking" means going along with the politically correct consensus. So whatever "critical thinking" is, people that use the expression without actually explaining what they mean, aren't using it.
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Totally agreed. Vaporware.
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My wife Sue developed two classes for the Virginia Beach City Public Schools Gifted Education Program (in the late 1980s) focusing on critical thinking skills and they are still taught (synopses from the 2015 Curriculum Guide below). I imagine other school systems offer (or can offer) something like these - you can also Google "Think Tank for Super Thinkers" ...
Think Tank for Super Thinkers (GP 1172):
One-half credit, first or second semester, Grades 9-10 This program utilizes an interdisciplinary approach that introduces a core of consultants from the professional and academic communities of the arts, social sciences, applied sciences, business, and media to the participants. Students will learn to research, assimilate, and respond through group work. The instructional focus will require students to think critically about social, political, economic, and environmental issues of our day. Field trips and attendance at cultural activities may be required. This class is offered at each high school, is taught by the gifted resource teacher, and is offered in an online, blended format.
SPARKS (GP 9500):
One-half credit, first or second semester, Grades 11-12 The SPARKS course will allow selected students to participate in a course designed to encourage the discovery and discussion of new and invigorating ideas, the development of critical thinking skills, and synthesis of complex issues. The course is offered in an online, blended format, allowing students to research and discuss selected topics. Instructional approaches are varied and may include speakers, debates, workshops, field trips, and community service projects. Online and face-to-face discussions will be conducted in a multi-disciplinary atmosphere encouraging students to make connections and explore relationships among different disciplines.
Sue was named the Outstanding Gifted Teacher of the Year for Virginia Region II in 2005, a few months before she died in January 2006. (See the "Tea
Tech skills? Sequencing and integration (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, the main mental skills you need in tech are pretty simple: understanding the goal/problem, breaking a problem down into steps, then putting everything together at the end.
If someone can figure out how to take a meal, make a recipe that makes the meal, then follow the recipe to make a meal, they'll be mostly fine.
Hidden features (Score:4, Insightful)
A long time ago, in the days of wordperfect and wordstar, there were keyboard overlays -- plastic sheets that fit over/around the keyboard function keys, providing labeling for functionality -- maybe F7 was bold, maybe SHIFT-F7 was underline. Thankfully, after so many years, I've finally forgotten them.
Then that kind of functionality got collapsed into drop-down menus.
Then the same functionality got compressed into "ribbons".
Now, it's hidden three layers deeper.
Today's applications present a very clean interface by hiding away all of the advanced functionality that's used less than 1% of the time. The thing is, 1% can mean dozens of times a day -- if you know that it's there.
For example, want to forward an e-mail, there's a button/action for forward. But there's also "forward as attachment", somewhere.
Tech newcomers to take a new application/program/feature and explore it long enough to figure what features actually exist. Of course they'll find the BOLD button, but they may never know about the balanced columns feature.
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I had to look up how to do comments on a Word document. The Microsoft page walks you through a bunch of stuff with the Ribbon, and not a single hotkey is mentioned.
In LibreOffice Writer, it's ctrl-alt-c, which is a whole lot quicker than dealing with the ribbon, especially if you are editing someone's manuscript and have to stick a ton of comments in.
Word allows audio and handwritten comments, at the expense of making the interface stupidly complicated. This is not useful.
--
BMO
The same skills everyone else needs, IMO .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Teach kids how to effectively use search engines and tools, for starters. The wealth of knowledge (and garbage) on the Internet requires good search skills to use it effectively. I see far too many adults, much less teenagers, who don't know how to put together searches consisting of more than a word or two. Learn the power of putting exact phrases in quotation marks, and suddenly you'll be able to narrow things down to just one or two very relevant pages when you Google for an error message. Use the * as a placeholder in a search for wildcard terms. Find social tags by putting @ in front of a name. Use minus-signs in front of words to exclude from search results, to help make them more effective. (If you're looking for information about purple rain but not a musical reference, try searching for it with -Prince.)
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Check out reddit and the types of questions you get in Linux and Programming related subreddits. Simple google searches would eliminate the need for about 90% of the posts.
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Good points, lads!
I will add that if these kids can get it together to do a quality search and some other more advanced skills put them onto building out a Linux server and making a web crawler and REALLY learn what online search is and how it works! Raise the bar!
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Critical thinking (Score:3)
Social Skills, Competition skills (Score:5, Insightful)
My 15 year old me is kicking me for saying this, but learning how to integrate into society, listening to other people's thoughts, and learning how to agree and disagree without going all Fox News screamy-shouty goes a long way. Learning to know how to build consensus or at least know when to build consensus (and when to go your own way).
Competition: learning how to win and how to lose without making a complete douche of yourself in either instance. You won't win every battle in the workplace, in your academic endeavors, in your love life; learn how to deal with it, learn how to learn from it, etc.
Learn how to set goals and how to take steps to achieve those goals.
These aren't tech specific, but I'd wager if a student can master any of these, they can do well in whatever field they wish to enter.
Re:Social Skills, Competition skills (Score:5, Funny)
Obvious (Score:2)
They need to know how operate a cash register, fry machine, lawn mower, espresso machine and be able to take care of other people's children.
How to NOT put video on the internet (Score:2, Insightful)
In fact, let's pass a law that requires anyone that ever puts sound or video on a restaurant's web page, to walk around with a giant, bright blue dunce hat on the head. And make it legal to randomly blow boat horns right next to their ear.
I have never ever, not once, wanted to see a video of a restaurant. Nor do I want any music or sounds when I try to get their location, hours, phone number, and maybe check out their menu. Maybe once I looked at a picture to see if it
How to get their H1B's (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be a useful skill that might get them a tech job.
Don't believe everything on the internet (Score:3)
spreadsheets! (Score:3, Interesting)
Use of spreadsheets is an adult-level skill they will use all their lives and a non-frustrating gateway into building solutions to numerical tasks. Their concreteness makes them accessible, the rectangular-grid layout makes them clear about what is happening, and the ability to keep improving them until you get them to do what you want makes them non-frustrating. Students who have had painful and futile math-in-school experiences (usually algebra) are especially gratified to have a tool that lets them handle sets of numbers correctly.
In addition to the low threshold, there is a high ceiling. The graphing capabilities, the extensive set of built-in formulas, and the potential to have some cells control the values of other cells means that spreadsheets can make use of as much inventiveness as most people can muster. And if someone thinks of a data-based project that a spreadsheet is not a good fit for, then they can branch out into databases and programming with a good foundation in precise thinking.
Security (Score:2)
Seriously. With every teenager having a cellphone, complete with picture cameras and basically a pocket computer, teach them to keep their security tight. What happens with their data. What happens when they take pictures of themselves. And that the internet never forgets. How to keep their data secure. How to avoid being taken advantage of. And what problems they will run into when something is being abused. And how to react to it.
It is about the thing that will have, invariably, no matter what profession
Take something apart (Score:2)
Or...just hand them a random box of PC parts and an OS install disk, and say "Make me a PC out of this"
Further....some coding investigation. "Find the line of code in here where it talks to homebase and sends some of your info to them."
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Just kidding, but learning how to figure something out takes a long time and a lot of people lack that ability as it seems to fall in the same category of learning things on their own. Starting young does make it easier to get them able to figure stuff out on their own and even at a young age they can do a lot with some guidance. For example I got a free 2 stage snow blower that had some carburetor issues (you really need to drain the fuel and run it dry before putting it away for the season)
What is your goal? (Score:2)
What is the goal of this program? "Tech skills" covers a whole lot of ground, from office-drone skills to systems administration skills to web layout to SEO-type skills to basic Internet use to actual Computer Science.
Knowing what your goals are for your students certainly influences the answers your going to get. Do you just want them to have basic Internet fluency? Do you want to prep them for typical (non technical) office jobs? Becoming digital publishers? Setting up networks? Creating their own r
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I gotta agree.
Way back when in my old mainframe days, I remember one of the most popular things was "chat programs." The people at the computer center thought this was a complete waste of resources. My argument was that it got people to use the computer as a tool to chat with other people. Once you got them thinking in that direction, it was easier to turn them on to other capabilities.
I remember my old girlfriend being surprised that she could use this computer thing to write papers far more convenientl
Need? (Score:5, Informative)
Should know? Basic familiarity, tools, and typing so that they can use the tools available via technology when its appropriate to use, and the knowing when to and when not to use it.
Technology does not magically solve problems. If you don't know how to write, using Word or OO/LO Writer isn't going to help you and it won't necessarily make you a better writer either. It's not different than a calculator making you a better mathematician versus just helping you along - you have to know how to do the math either way and when to use which formula, something a calculator can't teach you. All these things are beyond the purview and ability of technology.
So honestly, you could remove computers, the Internet, etc from the classroom and probably be more effective in teaching the requisite skills to move through life. What technology will be used in life will change over time and teaching it in the classroom won't change that or better prepare students for what technology they will actually use in the work force and life - exception being the specific vocational training for vary specific vocations and the requisite technology associated therein, even then an automotive mechanic should be able to diagnose a vehicle without a computer, etc.
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It won't even help you along. Calculators do arithmetic, not math. Most professional mathmaticians work with pencil and paper, although computerized proofs have become common and they no longer *exclusively* work with pencil and paper. Calculators don't come into it, though. Their work has nothing to do with calculating numerical results.
How to say "Fries with That" (Score:2)
main parts of Office; one coding language (Score:2)
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Well, there's Dwight Schrute, and Jim Halpert, and Pam Beesly, and...
Wait, those are the major parts of The Office. My bad.
Moderation (Score:2)
Probably the most important tech skill students need to know to be successful in school, is knowing when to put down the tech and pay attention in class.
Three skills (not exactly tech skills) (Score:4, Informative)
Three skills that will be invaluable to any HS student later in life:
(1) Good writing, i.e. being able to write well enough to communicate ideas effectively and convincingly (requires a lot of recreational reading, by the way, which doesn't seem particularly popular among the younger generation nowadays).
(2) Being able to stand up in front of an audience and give a good presentation.
(3) Knowing how to touch type.
Invaluable at age 18, and equally invaluable at age 68, no matter what direction your career leads you in.
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Three skills that will be invaluable to any HS student later in life:
(1) Good writing, i.e. being able to write well enough to communicate ideas effectively and convincingly (requires a lot of recreational reading, by the way, which doesn't seem particularly popular among the younger generation nowadays).
(2) Being able to stand up in front of an audience and give a good presentation.
(3) Knowing how to touch type.
Invaluable at age 18, and equally invaluable at age 68, no matter what direction your career leads you in.
Very true. The most valuable skill I learned in high school was typing. The second most valuable was public speaking. I more-or-less picked up writing skills later. I used all three in my 17 years as a software engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation: typing for coding, writing for project plans and functional specifications, and public speaking for team meetings and DECUS presentations. I still use those skills today, at age 69.
Learn to think (Score:2)
Enough to keep learning (Score:2)
HS is not an education but a primer to education. No one looks at a high school student and says "oh he's educated" and no one ever has. The point was to give people enough so they weren't fucking clueless.
So you teach them to read, some geography, enough math that they can understand the basics and can grasp the beginnings of the next levels up. You teach them some literature and so they understand what some of that culture stuff is all about... etc etc.
What tech skills do HS students need? Enough to gener
Not all tech-specific, but... (Score:2)
Every "tech skill" most people talk about has a very short half-life. Look at how many languages, mobile platforms and frameworks appear every year. Some get picked up, some don't, and some live on in some obscure corner of the world.
Don't focus on "skills" -- focus on "fundamentals." I've had a reasonably good career for almost 20 years now, and falling back on strong fundamentals has always saved me when faced with a new challenge. Anyone can learn how to write code in Python or Ruby -- it takes a solid g
Technology is Neither the Problem nor the Solution (Score:2)
They need critical reasoning skills and an understanding of how the world they live in actually works.
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No! we can't let kids find out how the world actually works. The legacy we're leaving them is too embarrassing. It would be best to insulate all of our children in a bubble forever.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a computer... (Score:2)
Basic vocabulary is a good place to start. Going forward, knowing how to type and how to use an editor efficiently will probably stand them in good stead, brain-reading computer overlords excepted. Knowing how to look up relevant things on the internet might be a longer-term goal, which depends on having a good conceptual framework. Motivation is key but not something you can really teach other than by pointing out some of the possibilities and hoping something grabs their attention.
What needs to be corrected? (Score:2)
Above all else, they need to be freed of the delusion that the ability to use a smart phone or tablet qualifies as "technical skills." Those devices are appliances, and using one does not confer any actual technical skills or knowledge at all.
Back in my university and high school days, it would be like someone who took a typing class claiming that they're "PC literate" becaus
Most important skill: Restraint (Score:3)
This advice is more for the young fold, but just as important for the older folk.
Exercise restraint on-line. Once it's out "in the cloud", there is no going back.
Network Basics (Score:2)
They ought to know the basics of how a network is put together. Understand vocabulary like router, server, LAN, WAN, ethernet, packet. Not saying they're all going to be future sysadmins, but people who understand how data gets from one place to another definitely have an advantage in today's world.
Most are not relevant (Score:2)
1) Logic - Being able to think clearly is useful for anyone
2) Basic troubleshooting - If you have a broken anything, printer, lawnmower, work process, coffee maker or piece of software the basic idea of how to troubleshoot remains pretty much the same
3) How to find things out when you don't know the answer - Sometimes t
They need to be able to write effective English. (Score:2)
Most don't. Programmers tend to be particularly bad, particularly when they're trying to think up new jargon to describe their latest brainwave.
Microsoft, with it's culture rooted in 90's C++ techno-machismo is the worst. If I have to hear "Consume services" once more, I may puke. Want to download Powershell from the Microsoft site? Did you expect a file name like "Powershell 4.0 for 64-bit"? Well, peasant, screw you! You shall have decide if you want to download "Windows6.1-KB2819745-x64-MultiPkg.msu", or
not that power button, the other power button (Score:3)
How to count change would be #1 (Score:2)
HS students need to learn how to count change, I'm pretty sick of them being flummoxed whenever the cash register isn't working correctly.
Being able to operate the digital controls on a fryer is probably a good foundation for a long career as well.
(but seriously, if you want to be an Engineer, and not everyone should, get it in your head that you don't quit buying textbooks and going to class the moment you graduate college)
Re: (Score:2)
you don't quit buying textbooks and going to class the moment you graduate college
I ran into this problem recently when I couldn't find something in a Python 2.5 programming book (copyright 2007) and couldn't find an answer on Google, but I knew that an answer existed because I've seen similar code to what I was trying to do. So I shot off a question to the Python email list, which provided the answer I was looking for and recommended that I get a newer book that covered Python 2.7/3.4.
Well... (Score:2)
They need a longer attention span and the ability to write. Neither of which is going to be served by giving them a laptop.
Sorry.
Basic hygiene & malware awareness (Score:2)
Screw Tech Skills (Score:4, Informative)
We should be teaching them home economics skills like time management, how to handle money (e.g. avoiding bad debts) and things like nutrition, cooking and how to navigate the health care system. That way they will be prepared to create a healthy & stable life for themselves, no matter what career path they choose.
Beyond that, some additional logic and problem solving focused courses would be helpful. Followed by increased focus on narrative based philosophy/history/social studies and hands-on skills like arts & (metal/wood)working. Once everyone is graduating HS with a basic competency in those areas, then maybe we should find a place for some tech only skills like programming languages and methodologies.
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That's not DO things.
DO things is change a tire, change the oil, CHECK the oil, CHECK the tires, BUILD a bench or table, INSTALL a door, install a deadbolt, shut off the water so you can replace a faucet, shut off the gas because you smell a leak, drive in the snow, drive at night, drive in the rain, drive a manual transmission vehicle, lift a heavy piece of furniture into a U-Haul, secure it, drive 2500 miles, unload it and put it where you want it.
You may not think those are 'tech', but there's a ton of r
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Ever tried putting a post-it note through your laser printer?
No but now I want to try it, especially with the one at work that seems to need service every week anyway.
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Why would anyone print anything even today? Save as PDF.