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IP: worth reading on FIRMS GO OUTSIDE BOX, TO CONGRESS TO SOLVE HIGH-TECH WORKERSHORTAGE from Educause
From: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 08:11:33 -0400
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 20:53:30 -0700 From: Norman MacLeod <gaelwolf () waypt com> Organization: Gaelic Wolf Consulting To: farber () cis upenn edu 840,000 tech jobs going unfilled, not enough H-1B visas to help corporate American fill the billets. What's wrong with this picture? A lot. We could fill those jobs with young Americans, except that the student IT resources in the vast majority of our schools are not adequate to the requirements to provide the necessary grounding for the students to graduate from high school prepared to participate effectively in an education-to-profession track that qualifies them for the jobs. Internet connectivity for every classroom in America? Maybe so, but one Apple IIC connected to the Internet for a room full of thirty or more kids doesn't really help a whole lot...and that's where Internet connectivity ends in a lot of our schools. I'm on our local school district's Technology Team, a committee of educators and parents responsible for guiding adoption and use of technology in all the K-12 schools in the community. We have a levy coming up in February, and we met with the School Board on Monday evening. While generally supportive of the needs we described, some of them are going to need a LOT of help in translating those needs into the words to persuade our taxpayers to vote for the levy. We've been asked to help educate the public and advocate for the needs we see. Since I did a lot of the "articulate speaker" stuff at the Board meeting, and then again at our monthly meeting on Wednesday, I'm being asked to be a key part of the education and outreach effort. We have to come up with a good way to publicize the District's needs, and discussing the H-1B visa issue will be part of the effort. We've also decided that we need to have an effective outreach to the community as well. We have computer resources that are not being used outside of school hours, so are hoping to find ways to make them available to the community for IT training and general computer use courses, but will need volunteers to help bring this to reality. Part of the outreach is to find ways to make computer and Internet resources available to students outside of school hours, with priority for students who do not have those resources at home. We want to try to at least narrow the digital divide here in our community through initiatives like this. ...And we want to make sure the community knows about what our outreach is and why we are doing it. We want to have at lease half a page, once a week, in the local newspapers, as well as time on the local radio station and the community access TV station. These resources will be used for articles by local computer users from all demographic sections of the community. We also want to have articles from IT leaders across the country and throughout the world, to bring the reality of the size and needs of the IT job market. You see, we are located in a tourist destination oasis in the middle of a Pacific Northwest where the traditional industries, such as forestry and fishing, are sliding down the tubes for many reasons. We are not close enough to Seattle to commute...and many of the people who live here are here, at least in part, because it takes nearly an hour to get the the nearest mall. But our young people need opportunity, and that's not going to come from tourism or the region's traditional industries. So, we have to convince people from an incredible range of backgrounds that passing the levy will be a Good Thing, and not just for our youth. We know that using the "for the children" approach will turn off a very large portion of the voting public. However, we can use a "provide our resources with the proper resources, and we can give those IT jobs to well trained Americans" approach to appeal to them. There's going to have to be a lot of wordcrafting to appeal to both wings of the political bird... We've been able to get some software from Microsoft, and we've had some good deals on some hardware. We would love to see more evidence of the part where you say, "Companies have addressed this problem by offering high-tech training to their own employees, students, and others already in the U.S." We've got a lot of people available for these opportunities, but there aren't a heck of a lot of companies providing them in our area. I firmly believe that we can build the opportunities for our youth to qualify for those jobs that are begging to be filled, but it's going to take a whole lot more than the current level of lip service to make it happen. I'm doing what I can, but I know it's far from enough. IP has a lot of really great people reading and participating...do any of you have some really practical ideas that could help our schools help our students make it to that IT education-to-profession path they need? Norman MacLeod -- ============================================= GAELIC WOLF CONSULTING Healthcare Informatics Telemedicine Solutions Internet Presence Strategy and Design Internet Marketing http://www.gaelwolf.com/ ***************************************************** PROPERTOUR(TM) ONLINE PROPERTY TOURS Bringing Buyers to Sellers More Quickly http://www.propertour.com/ ***************************************************** Home of the Gaelic Wolf Scouting Pages as a community involvement courtesy http://www.gaelwolf.com/gaelwolf/ =============================================
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- IP: worth reading on FIRMS GO OUTSIDE BOX, TO CONGRESS TO SOLVE HIGH-TECH WORKERSHORTAGE from Educause David Farber (Apr 15)