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Transforming IT Education: Promoting a Culture of Excellence |
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Written by Edward Mandla
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Monday, 14 December 2009 |
I'm delighted that some of my comments and passion while I was Australican Computer
Society (ACS) President for improving IT Education made it to a book
"Transforming IT
Education: Promoting a Culture of Excellence". The following is the link http://tinyurl.com/ybpetgz
It's
such a shame that much of the policy work over my era just got subsequently lost
in the Australian Computer Society. Pretty much the corporate memory of the ACS
has faded away with the third CEO in two years and some inward focus from later
Presidents. As is always the way in a not for profit organisation, when leadership is weak
and turning over, political staff start pushing their own agenda building
bureaucracies, securing their position and complety forgetting the job at
hand.
The book reflects that we were very vocal at the time about how IT
educators need to teach IT technical people business skills and soft skills,
like presentation ability, to better align themselves to shifting IT jobs. No
longer can IT workers work in isolation in dark windowless rooms - they are the
link between the technology engine room and the business brains of an
organisation. I still worry our degrees are too technical and we are pumping
out programmers because it's easy and the real game is selling migration via a
programming degree.
ACS staff, lost for ideas, call me now and then.
Transforming IT education isn't a idea, it's a policy area and a long term
journey. The ACS could occupy itself with this for years and help our nation
produce the finest IT graduates for Australian business rather than easy Visa's
and programmers.
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