Monday, April 8, 2013

Technology Skills: What will be needed by GSB graduates?

   I've been giving some thought as to what technology skills GSB seniors should have as they make the transition to college.  As I began to create a list, I realized it's surprisingly difficult. The difficulty, of course, rises from the the rapidity of technological change coupled with my inability to accurately predict the future.
   If, for instance, I was creating this list in 2009, I would not have included an ability to manage a cloud storage account.  Four short years later, it seems to me that this is a very important skill to have.  In fact, it was only in the year 2009 that I first heard the term "cloud" used in a technology context.  
   In no particular order, here's my working list as of today:

   1. Create and edit digital audio content
   2. Create and manage a blog
   3. Create an infographic
   4. Create a film that you have edited
   5. Create a screen capture tutorial
   6. Create a screencast
   7. Use polling software to create a survey and analyze results
   8. Use file sharing tools to share documents with remote users
   9. Create a multimedia presentation
   10. Create a web site
   11. Create and manage a cloud storage account


   What's left out? Those skills that I believe are easy fairly simple for most students and those that are largely for the tech aficionados.  The simple skills include using a touchscreen tablet, maintaining an email account, completing a Word document, etc. Skills that may be a bit too challenging for an expectation of commonplace usage include code writing and working with software to create interactive visualizations.


Care to weigh in? In terms of technology skills, what do you believe will serve our students well as they look ahead to life after GSB?  Feel free to post a comment below.

  

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