Read this quick article snipit – “We keep seeing ridiculous stories about how much productivity is lost through things like employees watching March Madness or personal surfing at work. However, the latest report on where companies are losing out on productivity actually makes some sense. It seems that basic IT illiteracy is a productivity killer. The better trained employees are in basic computer skills, the less likely they are to waste half a day trying to figure out how they gummed up their system with spyware, for example. Apparently studies have shown that a lack of good IT literacy can have someone waste up to 40 minutes per day. Of course, the real question is how to solve this problem. As the article notes, the answer is in better training for employees — but it’s not yet clear what kind of training is really needed. Perhaps part of the problem is that it’s different elements of basic IT skills that are tripping up people and there isn’t really one silver bullet for solving all those problems.” (http://techdirt.com/articles/20070319/182517.shtml).
What I wonder is how much I have to do with this, as a Business Ed teacher. How much do I have to do with increasing the mean level of computer literacy? I mean, another article spoke about how we can’t train “techniques”, like how to search the web effectively, by only using Google. But you can! All we can do as educators is use the software that is available today to teach the techniques today. It is important that we don’t get bogged down with the dynamics/options of one particular program, but instead focus on the skills needed in that program, so when it is obsolete down the line, your students can easily adapt to whatever program replaces it.
Moreover, getting back to some basic IT literacy, this is going to be a big issue in the future. Spyware is getting more advanced as we are. They don’t just say “Click here for a worm!” anymore, they disguise themselves to look exactly like something that Windows (maybe there’s the problem) would be giving you to save your system, and all of a sudden, you are infected. Sometimes, I just don’t know how to teach this any other way except just CLOSE everything and anything that pops up. Never click “Okay”, don’t even click “Cancel”, because either of those could mean whatever they want if they are made by programmers. It’s sometimes a scary place out there.
My essential point is, I agree with this article – sure, you can blame people for watching basketball highlights while they should be working, but when your productivity is down because your workers do not know how to most effectively use their computers when they are working… you have an issue. I would guess most business have “some issues”. And all teachers will have “some issues” in this area.
2 responses so far ↓
1
Cyril
// Mar 22, 2007 at 3:17 pm
The answer, in part, to your question is in the phrase Business Education. IT skills are not, in and of themselves, education for business – they are problem solving tools used in business (but as you noted also used elsewhere)
The trick then, as a business ed teacher is to teach “business” That is, teach the concepts, knowledge and skills of business – dealing with, employed by, owning, etc. Identify issues, challenges, obstacles, purposes, etc. Then teach whatever needs to be used to solve those problems – teaching IT without contextualizing it translates into wasted productivity
2
mrbenesh
// Mar 22, 2007 at 6:27 pm
How badly, then, are students deprived when they are taught by a non-Business Education teacher, in a Business Education class? A regular teacher might think that teaching a certain program (all the facets, options, specifically how to use THAT single program) is really helping a student, but it is really only making them dependent on that single program, unless the student him/herself realizes the big picture, and inherently gains some deeper understanding of the underlying skills. It’s the old “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”
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