Life-Long Computer Skills

Read the original article. - Life-Long Computer Skills

Summary:

Schools should teach deep, strategic computer insights that can't be learned from reading a manual.

Search Strategies

Today's search engines that lead the amrket will most likely not be in this same position in the next 20 years.

For this very same reason we should pay attention to how we perform searches, due to the fact that the intrafaces and the technology will probably change. We should teach the kids, how to use these engines in the best way possible.

Information Credibility

We found that children click advertisements much more than adult users do. It's important to teach kids how to recognize different types of ads.We need to teach kids strategies for judging and checking the credibility of online information. Teenagers are particularly impatient online, and thus potentially more vulnerable.

Information Overload

In the future we will have much more information avaliable on the tip of our hands than we have now. A lot of things will resultfrom it. More e-mail spams for example. More IMS programs. More of everything. So we need to watch out to avoid unecessary things so we don't waste our time.

Writing for Online Readers

Studies have shown the importance of diferent writting for the web. We teach the students to write a good paper, but we lack on teaching them to write in a way that will encrease the efficiency of a online text for example.

Computerized Presentation Skills

Good speakers know how to use PowerPoint to enhance their presentations rather than put audiences to sleep with bullet points. Fewer appreciate that today's presentations tend to be computer-supported and that more than pure speaking brilliance is required to get a point across.

Many students already use PowerPoint to present their projects. We should go beyond the mechanics of slide projection and teach them skills for effective computer-supported presentations.

Debugging

Basic debugging concept is a fundamental survival skill in the computer era. Most spreadsheets contain formula errors, for example, and unless people know how to find such mistakes, they'll make decisions based on the wrong numbers.

Sunday, March 30, 2008 1:34 AM