Sunday, February 15, 2009

Re: 21st Century Computer Skills

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Norman Constantine <
nconstantine@wakefieldschool.org> wrote:

> Keith,
>
> All of the techniques that you mention were developed for old style analog
> text production. I do not think we need to teach them, and better yet, to
> require them to be used with the new tools.


I remember very clearly, about ten years ago people were saying that we
shouldn't buy Apple computers because they were going to go out of business
in a year anyway, and we'd be left with a bunch of obsolete machines. What
happened? It almost became a self-inflicting (and I chose the word
"inflicting" on purpose) prophesy, as people stopped buying Apples in
preparation for the eventual shutdown, which caused them to lose market
share, which caused people to say "See, it's happening just like they said."

But Apple's still alive and kicking today. Left by itself, Apple might well
have had market share up into the 20% or 30% level. But because everyone was
so sure it was going to die, it went down to less than 10%.

Are the writing skills that I'm talking about going to go away because they
died a natural death, or because some of you out there killed them before
their time? Are you so sure that they won't be needed anymore that you don't
bother to teach them, thus pulling your own version of "Apple's going out of
business next year anyway, so why bother?"

I've seen this show before, and I'm willing to bet each and every one of you
$100 that some form of word processing will still be important by the time
I'm able to retire in 11 years. I'm willing to bet you that wikis, blogs,
and podcasts will be important additions to the communications pantheon, but
that a well-written document will still be very important, if not the most
important thing.

As I've said over and over again, no matter what things will look like 10 or
20 years from now, the change will be incremental. Papers will still need to
be written for many teachers and professors. Sermons will need to be
written, and not blogged. Articles will still be written for magazines
(which will still exist). Books will even still exist. And people will need
the tools and skills to write them.

Sometimes the problem is not that the outside world isn't moving fast enough
for those of us in technology, but that those of us in technology don't
spend enough time in the outside world to see how regular people really use
things.

If you are so sure that kids can teach themselves all they need to know, and
that all of the things I've been talking about are outmoded, then I
challenge you to stop teaching anything about computers tomorrow, since they
can do it themselves. And while you're at it, stop teaching the basics of
math and English too...after all, the kids can make up their own
multiplication rules and grammar as they go along.
--

keg

========================================
Keith E Gatling
mailto:keith@gatling.us
http://www.gatling.us/keith
The fact that I'm open-minded doesn't mean that I have to agree with you.
========================================

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