June 2008 — 21st-Century Classroom
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Which Side Are You On?
As Kay suggests, hard-core tech skills and less demonstrable cognitive abilities can go hand in hand. In fact, the former is enhanced by the latter, as Jeffrey Yan sees it. Yan, CEO of Digication, an e-portfolio vendor in Providence, RI, says that when he's on the lookout for new employees, he tries to hire fresh-out-of-college kids who can demonstrate the holy trinity of skill sets: critical thinking, problem solving, and programming.
Specifically, Yan says he likes to hire people with knowledge of HTML, C++, Java, and Ajax; people who have the ability to build web and database applications that can grow over time. During interviews, he quizzes candidates on how they would use programming to address a particular challenge. He may even present them with a challenge (build a better system for filing content, for instance) and asks them to write a basic program to fix it. Yan says such tasks inherently demonstrate broader ability to tackle complex problems. While he concedes that many programming skills can be learned later in life, he says the best candidates are those who got started as K-12 students.
"It's not enough to tell me you can design a database anymore," Yan says. "Nowadays, I want you to be able to tell me you can design a database that can interface with programs X, Y, and Z, or a database in which certain queries will be scalable." He adds that, for his professional purposes, the true 21st-century skill is the one that gets the job done: "Creativity and ingenuity are important, but at the end of the day, if you can't write the code, you can't get much further than a concept."
"Job applicants would be hard-pressed to demonstrate problem-solving excellence or critical-thinking prowess through an application packet or a one-time meeting."
Teaching Web 2.0
Mastery of certain programming languages is critical to a career in technology, but not for students who wish to go on to careers in other industries. For them, different tech skills are prized-- such as multimedia creation, managing social networking, and collaborating online.
At Newport Mesa Unified School District in Southern California, an extensive online education initiative emphasizes student familiarity with Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking applications, as well as collaborative tools like Google Docs and educational wiki spaces, such as those hosted by PBwiki.
According to Steven Glyer, the district's director of educational technology, the program makes students from an early age familiar with web-based technologies that will grow even more prevalent in the decades to come. Glyer says that the emergence of these technologies, which are rooted in facilitating communication and collaboration, should be driving schools to prepare their students accordingly. "Communication, collaboration, and how to work more efficiently-- you can't really go wrong teaching students those kinds of skills," he says. This recalls Ken Kay's point: Understanding how to operate the technology is necessary for students to demonstrate their higher-order skills-- one does not happen without the other. For graduates to stand a chance in the global economy, they need, as Glyer says, "to have a handle on both."
