On Monday I attended the latest “Digital Future Debate“, one of a number of seminars looking at IT, Innovation and Entrepreneurial skills in young people, and its potential positive impact on Scottish businesses.
Focusing on Education, the event gathered together a wide number of relevant parties including educators, policy makers, business owners and (most importantly!) young people. Panel members included among others, Sunday Herald business editor - Colin Donald, Raymond O’Hare (Regional Director of Microsoft Scotland), Kirk Ramsay (Chief Executive of the Science Centre), Joe Wilson (SQA Business Manager) and David Kelly (one of our web hosting clients!)..
In summary, the event generated a lot of good discussion, including debate on the “graduate skills gap” topic that I recently blogged on, with a representative from University of the West of Scotland claiming to be fully aware of the “relevancy” issues surrounding the teaching of ICT and Technology within Education Institutions, and confirming their plans to change it with some rather radical (and greatly welcomed) different approaches to traditional teaching. Colin Donaldson introduced the sessions with the question “Does business do enough to help education produce people with the required skills?” I’d argue that the issue is the inverse… Having knocked on a few educational doors over the years to see how we (as a small company operating on the “front line”) can help guide coursework etc, it’s clear that many in the traditional eductional world want to go it alone.
With regard technology in schools (primary and secondary), it was generally believed that even today, it’s the kids that are teaching the teachers, but there was some disagreement on whether online tools such as blogs, wikis, facebook and bebo, instant messaging etc were appropriate for the classroom. Personally I welcome them – the kids are already using them outside school, and as Joe Wilson pointed out, by using a combination of all these online apps they are effectively building their own “personal learning environments”, in which the potential to “learn” is often far greater than in the traditional classroom environment.
All in all – it was actually quite positive, with the future of education and it’s digital input looking promising, but as with all of these focus groups and debates, we now need to act rather than keep talking a good game-plan.
