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This interesting article looks at how the demand for a bachelor's degree is reshaping the workforce. It ties in to what Lynda Gratton mentions in "The Shift", that there is a need for 'mastery' skills, self-marketing, and creating credentials as so many people are now pursuing postsecondary education.

After reading these chapter in "The World is Flat," in particular chapter seven, I was thinking about l education and what has been beneficial to my learning now and in the past. it reminded me of this video about the benefits of music. Music is and always will be very important to me, and I thought this video would be worth sharing.

In Chapter Seven, Freidman talks about Georgia Tech's investment in musical activities for their science students. This video gives an overview of the neurological research behind why playing music benefits the brain.

Every dog has its day, and the same applies to economic theory. Today's dog is neo-liberalism, a policy framework developed by economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, which found political expression under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

One of the main themes this week in the book "Economics For Everyone" is the term neoliberalism. Take a look at this article by the globe and mail. It talks extensively about how privatization, free trade and deregulation are changing society.

Lynda Gratton comments about the future work world of Generation Y- they are a generation that has respect for diversity and human differences, and have grown up educating themselves on climate change and sustainability. This article can build on Gratton's description of Gen Y, as it describes the results of a survey of the attitudes of 546 millenials towards work in their future. The survey results do indeed show that millenials are interested in a work life that supports sustainability and social responsibility, but it adds the differences between male and female Gen Y'ers. The studies find that females are significantly more interested in environmental protection and social responsibility than are most males (more typically interested in profit maximization). While I believe this article may be fairly controversial and polarizing, it's interesting to further study the attitudes of what is my own generation.

This is a well-research and balanced article from the British magazine 'The Economist". It provides an accurate overview of the status of online learning. It's shortfall is that it is primarily focussed on US data.

This is a short, incredibly interesting and simple video about a different way to measure the "wealth" of a country. The idea was considered and put in place by the 4th Dragon King of Bhutan, who believed there was more than one way to measure a country's wealth than just its economic development. He believed the country should also be measured by its emotional and spiritual well-being: taking into account the people's community involvement, access to health care and education, and its celebration of religion or culture. While the concept has been subject to a lot of criticism (how do you actually quantify all of these factors?), it definitely gives us something to consider and echoes Stanford's assertion that GDP is not an adequate measure of human well-being. For more information, check out grossnationalhappiness.com.

This site is in Alberta however is great because you can easily see the type of occupation, the NOC code (for qualification purposes), average wage and average salary. An important pat of labour market information is being able to see what wage/income you will be receiving. This could make or break whether you accept a job or not.

This short article from a marketing school resource outlines key themes for self-marketing and the need for skill mastery in the changing workplace. While also providing more general advice to job-seekers everywhere in the form of how to put yourself out there. 

Does your age affect your work? This article speaks of age demographics and how different ages affect people differently in the workplace

I am particularly interested in working with at risk youth. It has been identified that youth unemployment and underemployment is in fact rising and is, amazingly, higher than during the recession! This article talks about medium and large companies getting on board to help young people gain skills during high school and/or post-secondary in order to add practical experience to their resume, along with their debt-inducing education. It will be interesting to see what happens over the coming years.

I recently attended a parent student council meeting and the principle indicated that there are a lot of schools paying attention to the works of Dr. Tony Wagner in order to enhance innovation skills within the high schools in Ontario. He also has a book called "Creating Innovators". Really interesting, think I am going to purchase it to read over the holidays!

The September 2014 edition of The Canadian Journal of Career Development has excellent articles on trends applicable to our class in general and specifically "The Shift" text. I recommend reading the article "Beyond Green Jobs: Assessing Sustainability Enhancing Career Options".

In part III, Gratton speaks to the positive affects of the five forces on one's lives. Demographics are mentioned. As mandatory retirement has been abolished in many jurisdictions, the changing demographics of workers living longer and thus having the ability to work longer may have positive and negative effects. This link is a survey of UK firms on the impact of mandatory retirement and the specific qualitative issues that may arise, such as enhancing customer service and employee performance, as well as the difficulties including less 'headroom' for younger workers and performance decline

The Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling is a Canadian non-profit that funds research and innovation in the career development field. You can receive weekly trends updates by signing up on their site. CERIC also sponsors the annual Cannexus conference.

I was inspired by Megan Rowe's post to look up information about transistors. Gratton posit that computing power will continue to increase as it ha now, but I had heard that we were reaching a limitation with transistors, so I looked up more information about this possibility. The exponential increase in computing power has already begun to slow down. Link to annotated version: https://diigo.com/03w8c7

I found this article very interesting, even though it is just statistics. One stat that stayed with me is the ratio of guidance counsellors to students in Canadian high schools is 371:1. I was surprised at this ratio, considering that the decisions a student makes in high school will have a great affect on their postsecondary education, training, or occupation options.

"The World is Flat" chapter 6 reveals that less young people are interested in science compared to the 'race to land on the moon' era which is really interesting, This website offers statistics on the most occupied college majors and business is overwhelmingly #1. People seem to want to make as much money as they can and the university I went to (Laurier) was very business dominated - so much they are building their own business building across the street!

This is a video from a TV show called The News Room. ** There is some bad language. A girl asked the panel "Why is America the best country in the world?" I feel his answer epitomizes the idea of a shift. A lot of what he says reflects on how our economy only cares about money and making the most profit and not the person anymore. I know this is not the typical article we reflect on, but I feel we can benefit from listening to this. We might be Canadians but we can listen to this and understand. Our education is not the best; we do not have the most well-off middle class. We can all learn from this. Jillian

I thought this was a particularly interesting website as it touches on a lot of things that Friedman has mentioned in his book; including the focus on this weeks readings on education and a knowledge-based economy. It has articles outlining how China is overtaking the U.S in terms of how much money is spent on science and technology funding for example, showing how the developing countries are catching up with us in terms of their high-skilled, more innovative work.