I did this episode of KWestions in the course of the EDUKWEST interview with Jeffrey McManus on his company CodeLesson and my general interest in the growing startup scene around educating people how to code.
As you know, instead of focusing on what a particular startup does, the KWestions format is about the bigger picture. You have probably heard me talking about the importance of education and skills for one’s career and how I see a shift regarding key qualifications needed happening right now and at an increasing pace.
For example, when talking about languages nobody today is still impressed when the candidate being interviewed say that they speak English. English is just a standard whether this is in Europe increasingly in Latin and South America and even on the African continent.
When it becomes interesting is how one qualifies over their second foreign language. As an employer it is interesting for me when a candidate is fluent in French or Spanish and probably even more interesting in an Asian language or in Arabic. All of this to a higher level of proficiency. As we can see, so called basic skills increasingly become not so basic anymore.
This is also true for technology in general. Now, you might say this generation of people in college or on the doorstep of professional life are all digital natives but take into account that there is a huge difference between just using technology, may it be the Internet itself, tablet devices or smartphones and really and the deeper understanding of technology, it’s potential opportunities for our society as well as business and thus mastering it.
Therefore, the guiding idea of my KWestions interview with Jeffrey is seeing technology and programming in particular as the new literacy, and in what way it might be integrated into classic educational frameworks to get the best out of these two worlds.
CodeLesson provides hands-on, instructor-led training through its interactive courses with real-world tasks and challenges without ignoring the theoretical basis.
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