Technology is part and parcel of our everyday lives, but should it also be part of our education? Technological skills can no longer be ignored, or considered to be specialized skills only used by programmers. If we want the workforce of tomorrow to be truly skilled and capable in every area, we need to offer them the chance to learn high-demand tech skills. Today people can still get by with basic touch typing skills, but will that still be the case 25 years from now?
How much will SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, and the cloud) affect our day-to-day living, our professions, our entertainment, and even our social lives?
It is expected that only a few decades from now life on planet Earth will be irreversibly tech-based. More processes will be automated, people will get more productive and work less, and everyone will enjoy more benefits from computers and the internet. But this future world and its advantages has a prerequisite: it assumes that everyone is competent in using technology.
Today, touch typing is considered an absolutely essential tech skill, even for children. Students as early as the third grade are expected to take final exams on computers. Without basic and essential typing efficiency, these students can set up themselves up for failure, even if they’ve studied for their exams – if a student knows the answers, but can’t type them in fast enough, they’ll leave answers blank, and those blanks will translate into zeroes on their grade cards.
In a similar manner, tech skills like programming will be rising in popularity in the following decades. Some people are even arguing that programming skills will be as necessary as reading and writing are now. While it’s possible to learn touch typing on a keyboard as an intuitive process, basic coding still needs to be formally taught, because it’s a more cognitively demanding tech skill.
What’s so important about coding is not that it could be the tech skill of the future. Just like math, coding helps us understand with greater clarity the logic and beauty behind the design of computer programs and applications.
Many people regard programming as more than a tech skill, because it gives the individual tools for better understanding, processing, and utilizing technology in their professional and personal life. It expands a person’s knowledge of how technology operates and gives them the know-how to make the most out of their tablets and smartphones. It ultimately boosts people’s efficiency at work and enhances their home and social entertainment and interpersonal relations.
Technology is part of our lives today, and tomorrow it may very well be a inseparable aspect of daily life. Equipping ourselves and our youth with tech skills is the least we can do in helping build a society of knowledgeable, responsible technology users.
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