Diane Quirk's Public Library

Perhaps, we need to consider what Diane Quirk writes in her blog, Technology to Empower Student Learning:

Are the ways we use technology designed to keep students occupied (obstacles) or are they designed to help students experience growth in their learning (conduit)?…The challenge for us as educators is to examine our practices in terms of being either obstacles or conduits to the learning of our students.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/65vuck

Diane Quirk, of “Technology to Empower Student Learning,” posted a comment on one of my rants about the mantra, “Integrate Technology.” I described how I was much happier with integrating contemporary literacy. But Quirk suggests in her comment that perhaps we should reconsider at integrate as well.

My initial response was that there may be some merit to this, but probably not enough to shake things up any more. However, I continued to think about it, and after reading her subsequent blog posting on the subject, decided that perhaps Diane is right.

Are the ways we use technology designed to keep students occupied (obstacles) or are they designed to help students experience growth in their learning (conduit)?...The challenge for us as educators is to examine our practices in terms of being either obstacles or conduits to the learning of our students.

Gone are the days when a college education meant you were set for life—much of what college students learn today at the start of their educations is obsolete by the time they graduate.

Educator Karl Fisch sums up the challenge: “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented yet, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.”

According to former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 may not have existed in 2004.

Consequently, continuing education is an increasingly important need for adults. We all are challenged to simply keep up with the constant advance in business practices, and we must be regularly updated in order to stay competitive in our jobs.

A 2004 book, The Jobs Revolution: Changing How America Works, notes that as recently as 1991, fewer than 50 percent of U.S. jobs required skilled workers. By 2015, 76 percent of American jobs will demand highly skilled employees. If that talent isn’t here, companies will be forced to turn to better-educated workers in other countries.

Regardless of outsourcing, the book notes that the emerging work force must be flexible, ready to spend a lifetime learning new skills because new kinds of work will continually be created and old ones will vanish.

“None of the top 10 jobs that will exist in 2010 exist today,” the book says, quoting former U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley. Those jobs will require technology that’s still being developed. The most important thing a student can do today is learn to learn. The book adds, however: “Rather than focusing on specific technologies or specific problems, we need to equip students with those concepts that are common to all problems, all technologies, all skills, ranging from workplace engineering to ethics to entrepreneurship.”

The article in Fortune concurs: “No one is saying that Americans can’t adapt and win once more. The No. 1 policy prescription, almost regardless of whom you ask, comes down to one word: education.”