Tech Education in Schools

Here is a piece I wrote Minnpost on ideas for improving technology education

How to not squander a Sputnik moment

By Gunnar Peterson | Friday, Feb. 25, 2011

It starts:

CNN Money declared software architect the Best Job in America. Having run a software architecture practice based in the Twin Cities for the past 10 years and consulted for many of the most innovative and successful companies, I could not agree more. The work is as interesting as it gets, and a mix of technical and communication skills are required to be good at it. You don’t have a ringside seat to the new technologies like smartphones, iPads and Cloud applications, you are in the ring! 

I looked at some concrete ways - high tech and low tech - to foster some improvements. Read the whole piece here. Its not about Tiger Moms, its about GeekDads (and GeekMoms)

Comments

[Frank Sfalanga]

Interesting perspective on the subject of education in K-12. Here in FL my 13 year old is having to rely on his own sense of curiosity to gain a technical education. It helps that I helped organize a local Linux User Group thirteen years ago. This has given him access to 60 or so actual working sysadmins, software developers, webmasters and robotics programmers. They are much older than he - but technology doesn't descriminate based on age so long as you can grasp the concepts.

I hadn't heard of scratch (the MIT project) but my son started with Python and has dabbled in many programing languages/systems. Currently he's writing a GUI front-end for pdftk using codeblocks.org C++ and GTK

Did I mention that his school is ill equiped to provide guidance? Interestingly, I and his instructors do exactly as your article suggests. They tell him, "That's good - you can do better!"

Great article. Thanks

[Brian B]

Student interest in getting a college degree in Engineering has been declining for years. Math / Science / Engineering is "hard" for most people, and for some time there doesn't appear to be the motivation for students to invest the effort required.

I suspect education is less of a factor than societal perception or change.