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Young people's views on work and careers Future Innovators commissioned DEMOS to undertake a short study examining young people's attitudes to the future of work. It is based on a survey of 15 and 16 year olds, who are about to make decisions regarding their future, such as the careers and qualifications they are going to pursue. The study The study explores young people's attitudes towards work and skills and argues that a wider set of skills and personal attributes are likely to be required from them when they reach the workplace. The study paints a picture of a generation that understands the value of hard work: 90 per cent believe if you work hard you'll usually succeed. However, with more employers identifying skills like creativity as key to the workforce of the future, it warns of a disconnect between employers' demands and young people's skills and perceptions. It suggests that they may be entering the workforce lacking the full range of skills, which will allow them to contribute to the expansion of the economy. The study also examines some of the key influences on young people, to understand how their world views are shaped and where successful interventions might be targeted in the future. 'Parents and family' were identified ahead of school, showing the importance of both formal and informal learning. 'Ready for the future?' Full report 'Ready for the future?' Executive summary

You can't get much more basic than the lead finding of Poynter's EyeTrack07 study, presented this morning to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C.Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly.And there's a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is even stronger online than in print.At a time when readers are assumed to have short attention spans, especially those who read online, this qualifies as news. RELATED RESOURCES -- Marketplace report on Poynter's Eyetrack research -- Editor & Publisher report That was the predominant behavior of roughly 600 test subjects -- 70 percent of whom said they read the news in print or online four times a week. Their eye movements were tracked in 15-minute reading sessions of broadsheet, tabloid and online publications. Evidence from these sessions revealed how long readers spend with the stories they pick, as well as a host of other details about reading patterns.This first look at EyeTrack07's headline findings is presented here in four formats:A video produced at Poynter last week, that replicates the presentation Sara Quinn and Pegie Stark Adam gave this morningA text version of that presentationThe slides [PDF] used in this morning's presentationA brochure [PDF] summarizing both the findings and the methodology of the studyAlso, be sure to take a look at this video, produced by Poynter's Al Tompkins, and included in the ASNE presentation this morning.The study, which was planned more than a year ago, tested readers in Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and St. Petersburg, Fla., last summer and fall.But analysis of the readers' eye movements was just completed recently. The project is still a work in progress. Deeper analysis is ongoing, and more findings are slated to be released later this year.The application of these initial findings to print and online design is just beginning.Discussion continues at a major Poynter conference April 10 through 12. That conference is full, but you can still sign up for a hands-on EyeTrack workshop to be held at Poynter in September. Click here to learn more and register.A book with complete results, pictures of the materials test subjects viewed and a full account of how the research was done will be available in June.

All of these programs link to myriad open APIs--advanced program interfaces that serve as building blocks for new applications--and data on the Web from Amazon (Research), Google (Research), and others. Thus can the information on your desktop be fused with the entire Web through a powerful and increasingly invisible bridge between the two.

It's been a long time -- all the way back to the dawn of desktop computing in the early 1980s -- since software coders have had as much fun as they're having right now. But today, browser-based applications are where the action is. A killer app no longer requires hundreds of drones slaving away on millions of lines of code. Three or four engineers and a steady supply of Red Bull is all it takes to rapidly turn a midnight brainstorm into a website so hot it melts the servers.

Examining what people do online as they look for information, communicate with others, make transactions, and entertain themselves.

The demand for IT professionals has grown rapidly since 2001. The number of employed IT professionals has increased from approximately 8,400 in June 2001 to over 28,000 in June 2006. Employment growth of IT professionals of 27.3% per annum was well above 2.8% growth for all occupations. On average, about 4,000 new IT jobs were created each year between June 2001 and June 2006. About 1,300 degrees and postgraduate diplomas with an IT major were awarded in 2005. This was 24% lower than in 2003, when qualification achievements peaked. A comparison of the number of degree and postgraduate diplomas awarded, with the number of employed IT professionals yields a training rate of 5.1% in 2005. This has declined from 12.4% in 2000. The number of students enrolled for IT degrees declined by 44% between 2001 and 2005. This indicates that the number of IT graduates is likely to continue declining in the next few years. Since 2002 permanent and long-term migratory flows of IT professionals have made a small but positive contribution to the supply of IT professionals in New Zealand.

Flexible manufacturing systems, team work with decentralisation of decision-making, integration of tasks and multiple allocation across functional barriers demand a skilled work force prepared for continuous learning and adaptation. It is common to see a younger, well-educated and trained work force as being required for such a production environment. A closer empirical look at most of the internal labour markets in this study shows that existing labour market structures do not match this image. Existing labour markets consist very often of an older (and ageing) labour force with relatively low skills and with resistance to continuous training. These structural features have, over the last ten years — despite the existence of costly early retirement measures and new entries into internal labour markets — not much improved, and in many cases have even deteriorated.

"I remember going into a room to meet a group and at the sight of the uniform they shrank away and clammed up," he says. "I thought: no, that isn't how we do policing here."Within the week, he was on the internet, checking out Teach Yourself Lithuanian courses. By the end of the month, he took delivery of a set of CDs.