Future Resilience #5 — Technological Capability
Technological Capability seems obvious and ubiquitous as a real skill, right? Wrong.
Unfortunately, according to recent PISA tests, a quarter of Australian 15 year olds (27%) demonstrated low proficiency in digital literacy. Additionally, the OECD has found that the attitude of Australian students towards computers is significantly less positive than average attitudes. Unfortunately, low socio-economic and Indigenous students also report lower levels of belief in the importance of working with computers, signalling weaker understanding of the workforce of the future. According to the FYA, Low socio-economic students also profess lower confidence in performing high-level tasks on computers.
The lack of proficiency in technology isn’t just present in our young people. In a 2018 MGI survey, one fifth of respondents said that one major reason their company was unable to embrace automation and AI was due to top executives lacking sufficient understanding of these technologies. Executives themselves don’t need to be technology experts but they do need a basic understanding of of AI and the application in a business setting.
The UK Digital Skills Taskforce has classified digital skills into 4 levels:
- Digital muggle: no digital skills required
- Digital citizen: use technology to communicate, find information and transact
- Digital worker: configure and use digital systems
- Digital maker: build digital technology
More than 90% of Australia’s current workforce will need to be at least a digital citizen to function in a digitally-enabled workforce over the next 2–5 years. Foundation for Young Australians
Although the average young person will need to be a competent Digital Citizen at the very least, our future workplaces will also require technical skills in advanced technology. Young people will need programming skills, as well as skills to design technology and adapt it to needs. The FYA states that, “In an average working week, the time spent on tasks requiring advanced technology skills is set to increase by 75 per cent from 4 hours today to 7 hours in 2030.”
So, how might we help our young people to embrace their position as digital citizens?
According to the FYA, one way is to give our young people more time to develop their critical thinking and communication skills in absorbing new information. We should allow time for young people to play with new technologies and use thinking tools to help them update their thinking in response to new information.
This means we need to work with technology rather than against it. I was thrilled this week when students we allowed to use their phones to participate in a Goosechase about Design Thinking. Young People will find it difficult to think critically about technology unless we provide the space and time to do so.
We also need to ensure equitable access to new technology. You can see my interview regarding this below:
Equitable access to technology is also reliant on teachers. Teachers themselves must be curious and play with new technologies. Take the time to explore new technologies with your young people. You might even ask your students to record reviews. Not only is it fun, but it’ll improve student attitudes towards computers and this practice will set up young people to practice new technology skills regularly as will be required in their adult life.
Embrace technological language. Coding is a language that all young people will need to know, it must be a staple in language and literacy lessons for all students. Young people will need to be able to think and communicate in these types of algorithms from early childhood. Here’s a short case-study of how I did this will my primary-aged students in English.
Allow students to practice typing just as much as hand-writing; they’re likely to type more than they will hand-write. There are a plethora of free typing programs that your students can access.
Balance technology with other forms of learning and working. Sometimes, technology is not the best input or output. Help young people to think critically about how best to gather information and share information. Sometimes, human to human is the most effective.
Speaking of human to human, if you missed last week’s blog on Empathy, here’s the link.
