Top 5 Things to Teach IT Students: The Rest We Teach to Everyone

This Computerworld piece is interesting, first, for predicting what we should be teaching our students so that they have the right IT skills in 10 years.  But I’m more interested in the second sentence, “Employees throughout the organization will understand how to use technology to do their jobs.”  Really?  We’re not doing such a great job at that today.  I think that Computerworld is laying out an interesting and important goal. But we have to change the way that we’re teaching all the non-IT experts if we’re going to achieve that goal.

In the year 2020, technical expertise will no longer be the sole province of the IT department. Employees throughout the organization will understand how to use technology to do their jobs.

Yet futurists and IT experts say that the most sought-after IT-related skills will be those that involve the ability to mine overwhelming amounts of data, protect systems from security threats, manage the risks of growing complexity in new systems, and communicate how technology can increase productivity.

via 5 Indispensable IT Skills of the Future – Computerworld.

CS Education Gets Congressional Attention

I didn’t realize that the same week that the CS Ed Act was introduced by Representative Jared Polis, another Representative (Vernon Ehlers of Michigan) introduced the CS Ed Week resolution.  As Cameron’s blog points out, it’s about getting and keeping congressional attention.

Last week was a huge one for computer science education in the Nation’s Capital. Congressmen from both parties introduced two pieces of legislation — The Computer Science Education Act  and the Computer Science Education Week Resolution  — intended to help strengthen computer science education. I’ve written before that the road to education reform is long, and progress will come in fits and starts. Both pieces of legislation represent another step along this road and the beginning of a much broader engagement to bring attention to computer science education issues in the United States.

via CS Education Gets Congressional Attention | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM.