IP: worth reading on FIRMS GO OUTSIDE BOX, TO CONGRESS TO SOLVE HIGH-TECH WORKERSHORTAGE from Educause

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> 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
>
>
>
> --
>
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