The future graduate
My mind is still racing with thoughts from our discussion last night, so I wanted to create a couple of new posts to help us sort our thoughts. This first one is the “Future Graduate” so we can start discussing that and finding articles and links to share, and the second post is going to be “How do we get there?”
(Actually—a warning—I spent 45 minutes typing my post and when I went to publish it,edublogs had lost it. (then when I went back later, it reappeared! So a word to the wise, if you think it’s going to take you a while, work in Word and post it later!)
One thread we talked a lot about last night was the future graduate from the college perspective. Hearing Dr. Chang’s perspective really drives home the value of the vertical teaming aspect that we were talking about—and I think if we have both the college perspective and bring in the perspective from the elementary school level in our own district that would really give us a lot of insights.
We talked a lot about the future science/math/computer science trends, which were fascinating. I was surprised to hear that the projections are that U.S. colleges will turn out only ¼ of the graduates needed in computer science by the year 2014. We also talked a lot about other math/science graduation trends.
Having more idea of future trends really would inform our discussion better, so I thought I would start out by listing a few links to some “trend” statistics.
The Occupational Outlook handbook has many helpful links, but for a quick glance, here is their projection of the fastest growing occupations from 2004-2014.
http://www.bls.gov/emp/mlrtab2.pdf
(and if you really want to peruse more of their projections, here is a link to more.http://www.bls.gov/emp/home.htm#outlook
America’s Career InfoNet is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor. This link allows you to manipulate occupational data for Texas. It shows the growth rate in actual jobs, and then in percentage growth–very interesting trends there in health sciences and computer sciences, for example.
http://www.acinet.org/acinet/state1.asp?next=state1&id=11&nodeid=12&soccode=&stfips=48&x=47&y=13
The Texas Workforce Commission allows you to manipulate projections of data for different regions of Texas. So if you pick Central Texas in the category “Industry Projections,” it creates a chart showing the growth rates of particular fields.
I was really astonished to see that the field with the highest growth rate in central Texas was Education, actually, which topped out at 54% projected growth rate. The second fastest growing field in central Texas is Health and Social Sciences, according to this projection.
Here is the link so we can explore these charts:
http://www.tracer2.com/?PAGEID=67&SUBID=114
Anyway, that is some information to start us off…
October 5, 2006 @ 12:38 pm
Great discussion indeed. I appreciated the chance to sit with the technology sub-committee and I hope my daughters all turn out as well rounded and well spoken as Christina! I have been getting some wonderful responses from my email I circulated among my “community/business” contacts. One that just came in will be of interest. It references an article in today’s WSJ that discusses how the torrent of anti-Americanism in much of the world affects teenagers. Here is a quote from my friends email:
“I though one of the more interesting comments was the fact that many high school history classes teach our children about the French revolution which began in 1789 but they don’t really touch on the Iranian Revolution that began in 1979 and which will likely have a much more profound impact on our children and the world they will inherit.”
I will attempt to locate the article and bring copies to the next meeting. I believe you have to be an on-line subscriber to the Journal to capture it on-line.
October 6, 2006 @ 1:46 pm
Thanks for sharing that. We might be able to get the article online through our database, but I still couldn’t post that link since it’s only for subscribers.
I also found an article which has a lot of food for thought–more questions than answers, actually.
It’s by Will Richardson, who promotes blogging in education, and is about the ways in which students can already connect with the outside world through various technologies, and how he thinks that can help education.
http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1648&issue=oct_06
–Carolyn
October 6, 2006 @ 6:07 pm
Thanks for the article Carolyn. I found it particularly interesting as I struggle to learn how to download digital photography and just this week became a blogger (thanks to you!) I thought this piece in particular to be quite interesting:
“. . . we find this era of the maturing of the digital natives, as Marc Prensky calls them, to be a troublesome time. These technologies scare us, challenge us, and the friction between the old, closed-door classrooms and this new, open, transparent world of learning is becoming more and more apparent. Being on the Web changes things . . . It feels as if the ground is shifting beneath us, and it’s made us uneasy.”
The above excerpt and the article in general reminded me of the quote I shared from Peter Druecker in our last meeting. Here is the quote:
“In a few hundred years, when the history of our time is written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event those historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time–literally–substantially and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.”
By-the-way, the responses I am receiving from my initial “reach out to the community” email are blowing me away. People really want to have a say on this overall topic. I find it great fun to have a forum to discuss how we help prepare ourselves and our children for the exciting times ahead.
– Page
October 6, 2006 @ 10:07 pm
That’s exciting to hear! Thanks again for sharing that quote–I meant to ask for us to have a copy of it.
I was just reading a section of World is Flat which talks about that as well.
I think the capability that all this new technology is providing for students to have more of a voice, and to “think aloud” as it were, is going to be a very interesting and challenging time for education.
I actually think the ability for people to have more of a voice could be very empowering to our students. There is always a lot to learn, but students have a lot to say about what they are learning as well.
It seems to me that schools could become somewhat more like seminars in college, or collaborative like the workplace where there are many ways to contribute and share ideas.
Thanks again for posting the quotes for us! –Carolyn
October 8, 2006 @ 8:06 am
Great discussion, Page and Carolyn – I enjoyed reading the comments by Will Richardson. I can relate to the fact that they can be unsettling as it is far more comfortable as an educator to keep doing business the way we always have! I read an interesting article this morning in Phi Delta Kappa that I’ll share with the committee next meeting as we paint a portrait of a future WHS graduate. The title is “A Subtractive Education” and can be found at http://www.pdkintl.org.
Linda
October 8, 2006 @ 8:59 am
Carolyn might have shared this already, but the technology sub-committee needs to check out http://www.wschoolnews.com – Lots of good information on technology and schools. Check out the link to the story in USA Today!
Linda