Are we teaching students to look for help everywhere to solve their problems?
4. There should be a K-12 agreement about which skills and software knowledge our students are going to graduate with.
A expected skill set sounds like a good idea but is a list of required software competencies too prescriptive and unrealistic to maintain?
Yes….first of all this is exaclty why the NETs for Students does not list software. If we teach software we are teaching a program not a skill. Let’s teach skills and use the appropriate program needed to accomplish the task at hand. Like Andrew points out, it really is unrealistic to maintain a list of all the programs that students have mastered, been exposed to, or know exist. I have seen schools try and do this and I have only seen a mess as the outcome. Students come and go, programs come and go, one year we are teaching X and the next year Y. Teach the skill and choose the program that fits.
John Pearce on 28 Jan 13"I've been getting a lot of questions from high school kids asking whether or not they should go to college. The answer is yes. College is where you find out about yourself. It's where you learn how to learn. It's where you get exposure to new ideas. For those of us who are into business you learn the languages of business, accounting, finance, marketing and sales in college. The question is not whether or not you should go to school; the question for the class of 2014 is what is your college plan and what is the likelihood that your college or university you attend will still be in business by the time you want to graduate? Still in business? Yep. When I look at the university and college systems around the country I see the newspaper industry."
