Tech Tips
April 2017: Volume 4- Number 36
Spring is Here!
You'll find a wide variety of apps, articles, and websites in this issue.
These Three Job Skills Aren’t Just For IT Workers Anymore
These Three Job Skills Aren’t Just For IT Workers Anymore
"To thrive in the future of work, you’ll need to integrate people, processes, data, and devices in order to work strategically and effectively, no matter what unexpected upheavals come your way. In other words, you’ll need to know how to use technology for the benefit of your organization. But so far, there aren’t nearly enough people who can do that that the modern workforce needs.
In new research I recently conducted with DeVry University’s Career Advisory Board on the gap in tech skills, nearly 60% of HR and hiring managers said it was common for job applicants to lack the applied tech skills they needed to succeed. And nearly half reported this same deficit in their current employee base."
10 Ways to Make Innovation Real in Your School
excerpt:
#1. Be Expert Learners
I put this first on the list because we have to be master learners. We have to understand the science behind learning and the four stages to learning anything: attention, encoding, storage, and retrieval. This first principle building block of learning allows us to help students to be prepared for anything. In Liz Wiseman’s award-winning book, Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, she writes:
In a rapidly changing world, experience can be a curse. Careers stall, innovation stops, and strategies grow stale. Being new, naïve, and even clueless can be an asset. For today’s knowledge workers, constant learning is more valuable than mastery.
We have to be expert learners, so our students can be expert learners. If we fail to grasp this shift, then we rely on being content experts when the content is already constantly changing.
#2. Stay Informed or Get Left Behind
What are you feeding your brain? What are you reading? What videos are you watching? What YouTube channels do you subscribe to? What podcasts are you listening to?
How are you staying informed as a learner and leader? How are you staying updated as a parent and educator?
If you are not informed then you can only make decisions and plans for you and your students with outdated information. Here are some quick things you can do to stay informed:
- Get on Twitter. Follow these educators. Browse the hashtags and choose three that are relevant to what you do (or want to do) and follow the hashtags and join the chats if you can.
- Read the work of Peter Diamandis and subscribe to his newsletter. You’ll be informed on how things are changing in the world.
- Download the Flipboard App. Choose everything you are interested in to follow as a subject/topic. Check it every day or every week to learn about those topics and read newly curated articles.
- When you find an article from Twitter or Flipboard that really speaks to you, sign-up to follow that writer. Chance is they’ll have more great stuff you’ll like in the future.
SCS Instructional Technology Information
Contact me if you have any questions or would like help using these tools.
Email: vturner@scsmustangs.org
Website: http://www.strongnet.org/InstructionalTechnology
Phone: 440-572-7067
Twitter: @vturner8