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Ask Slashdot: What Tech Skills Do HS Students Need To Know Now?
heybiff writes: During summer months I deliver brief tech workshops to high school students as part of an enrichment program. Almost all of the students are average students pulled from non-magnet comprehensive high schools throughout our city. Make no mistake — these are not the students who have a love of technology and coding; many were coerced by excited parents or guidance counselors. After doing this for almost 10 years, I have found students have become considerably more comfortable with technology, and confident in their use, especially with smartphones and tablets being ubiquitous. Unfortunately, I also see a lot of basic knowledge and tech skills all but nonexistent. Moreover, students seem unaware that the tech they use daily even has any usefulness for academic activities. So what I put to you fellow Slashdotters is: What do students today realistically have to know to be successful in school? Which tech skills are still important and necessary, and which are gone the way of the typewriter? What misconceptions or outright lies have become so ingrained in young people's use of technology that they need to be addressed? Finally, the program puts laptops in students' hands, to give them a kickstart in being successful; what skills do they need to get the most out of the new hardware they were just given?
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Kids today know how to use today's electronic toys. There's nothing for them to learn that won't be obsolete and/or just plain wrong by the time they finish their education. And giving them laptops will NOT boost their learning rate - cut-n-paste from wikipedia or google is not "getting an education."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Please teach all kids how to type at least 70-80 wpm. It is a skill they will use forever.
While students may "know technology" these days, I'm getting a lot of students at university that don't understand where their files go. I have students who don't know about simple keyboard shortcuts like cut, copy, and paste. I've had to give mini lessons on how to do basic formatting in Microsoft Word, and how to do simple manipulations of a spreadsheet. Learning how to code is useful, but I feel that should come after learning some very simple basics.
They can figure out the rest.
A long time ago, in the days of wordperfect and wordstar, there were keyboard overlays -- plastic sheets that fit over/around the keyboard function keys, providing labeling for functionality -- maybe F7 was bold, maybe SHIFT-F7 was underline. Thankfully, after so many years, I've finally forgotten them.
Then that kind of functionality got collapsed into drop-down menus.
Then the same functionality got compressed into "ribbons".
Now, it's hidden three layers deeper.
Today's applications present a very clean interface by hiding away all of the advanced functionality that's used less than 1% of the time. The thing is, 1% can mean dozens of times a day -- if you know that it's there.
For example, want to forward an e-mail, there's a button/action for forward. But there's also "forward as attachment", somewhere.
Tech newcomers to take a new application/program/feature and explore it long enough to figure what features actually exist. Of course they'll find the BOLD button, but they may never know about the balanced columns feature.
Teach kids how to effectively use search engines and tools, for starters. The wealth of knowledge (and garbage) on the Internet requires good search skills to use it effectively. I see far too many adults, much less teenagers, who don't know how to put together searches consisting of more than a word or two. Learn the power of putting exact phrases in quotation marks, and suddenly you'll be able to narrow things down to just one or two very relevant pages when you Google for an error message. Use the * as a placeholder in a search for wildcard terms. Find social tags by putting @ in front of a name. Use minus-signs in front of words to exclude from search results, to help make them more effective. (If you're looking for information about purple rain but not a musical reference, try searching for it with -Prince.)
My 15 year old me is kicking me for saying this, but learning how to integrate into society, listening to other people's thoughts, and learning how to agree and disagree without going all Fox News screamy-shouty goes a long way. Learning to know how to build consensus or at least know when to build consensus (and when to go your own way).
Competition: learning how to win and how to lose without making a complete douche of yourself in either instance. You won't win every battle in the workplace, in your academic endeavors, in your love life; learn how to deal with it, learn how to learn from it, etc.
Learn how to set goals and how to take steps to achieve those goals.
These aren't tech specific, but I'd wager if a student can master any of these, they can do well in whatever field they wish to enter.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
In fact, let's pass a law that requires anyone that ever puts sound or video on a restaurant's web page, to walk around with a giant, bright blue dunce hat on the head. And make it legal to randomly blow boat horns right next to their ear.
I have never ever, not once, wanted to see a video of a restaurant. Nor do I want any music or sounds when I try to get their location, hours, phone number, and maybe check out their menu. Maybe once I looked at a picture to see if it was a dive or not, but that's it.
That is ALL we ever want to know about a restaurant.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That would be a useful skill that might get them a tech job.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.