Notosh FUTURE SKILLS INTENSIVEs

Post Workshop Resources #4

THE FUTURE OF SKILLSA VISION FOR 2030 The idea of having one job for your whole career is over. Our young people will need to be comfortable with switching jobs, possibly up to 10 times, in their lifetimes.

New technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, will affect how we all work in increasing measures… imagine a system that emails your clients automatically or one that creates appointments for you. It’d be just like your own personal assistant.

The future of work will also be much more informal, flexible and personal. Imagine being able to choose when and where you work.

Importantly, this newsletter, the last in our series, will focus on each of the 8 skills from our last F2F session together in more depth.

• Problem Solving

• Communication

• Collaboration

• Creativity

• Empathy

• Technology (Digital Literacy)

• Agility

• Entrepreneurial Thinking

For more on a vision for 2030, read:https://medium.com/world-innovation-summit-for-education-wise/the-future-of-work-personal-adaptive-protected-c2c2d63e2ed4

Key places to learn more from NoTosh:

For how: www.notosh.com/lab

For stories and examples: https://notosh.com/

For books: https://books.notosh.com/

WEBINAR RECORDING:

https://zoom.us/recording/share/5V8FoSg5O8gddt9WTTkYhvBkdvCuQ2x7k2G73mwy-iywIumekTziMw

COMMUNICATION

Despite being more connected than ever, our young people seem to lack the basic communication skills, especially across multiple platforms and to diverse audiences. Our young people must be able to harness social media as well as instant messaging as well as email as well as essay writing. Considering diversity means that young people need to communicate across different cultures and languages and resolve disagreements. Success in the future can only be achieved if young people are able to effectively convey what they know.

COLLABORATION

Solving problems collaboratively is integral to the modern workplace. Our young people need to be able to utilise their strengths to help and support their colleagues in a range of situations. Instead of “collaborating” only in end-of-unit projects, it should be an integral part of the learning process. Learning is about co-creating knowledge and sharing experiences, just as employees do when designing new products and services. Young people must learn to work with adults, peers, other students across grade levels, as well as community members in all learning experiences.

CREATIVITY

A focus on discrete information, standardisation and grades can all destroy creative confidence. How many times have we seen that students believe that creativity only occurs in the arts classes. This is simply not true. Creative thinking is required as much in technology as it is in drama class. When we reduce knowledge to common standards and score accordingly, we stifle new ideas. By emphasising overall development and growth we can help students to take more risks and think out-of-the-box.

PROBLEM SOLVING

According to FYA (2019), almost 100% more time will be spent problem-solving in the future of work. The consequence of this is that students must spend more time finding and solving problems at school. Memorisation can no longer be the standard for learning, rather students require skills in rationalisation and synthesis across disciplines to solve new problems they have never before

encountered. Our current jobs require us to work that way.

Schools can build these skills and foster resilience by avoiding the “one answer/one subject” trap and, instead, opening up “wicked” problems that require students to analyse a problem from different perspectives and create new solutions using transdisciplinary understanding.

EMPATHY Not only is empathy at the heart of great classroom culture, it’s vital for a world that accepts and embraces others.

MIT conducted a worldwide experiment in Ethics and Empathy to help program AI to make empathetic decisions. You can play in the experiment here:

http://moralmachine.mit.edu/

Empathy is also key for Entrepreneurial and Design Thinking.

Empathy is the ability to connect to other people’s feelings and perspectives in a meaningful way.

In a recent UK Trial of Empathy in Schools (2016 - 2018), the results were astounding. Empathy improved relationships, learning culture, Wellbeing and even standardised testing scores.

TECHNOLOGY

CREATORS RATHER THAN CONSUMERS More than ever, our young people will need to develop technology that works for them. They will need to be creators of technology rather than simply consumers of technology. And, young people will need tools to manage their technology consumption.

“Over one third of 15 year olds are not proficient in the skills they need for the future of work such as science, maths, technology, financial literacy and problem solving.” FYA, 2019.

For more on this, read: https://www.fya.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/NWO_ReportSeriesSummary-1.pdf

AGILITY Agility is often quoted as ‘learning to learn’. It’s expected that our future work will require us to be learning on the job about a third of the time. Agility empowers us to accept and embrace change, and even to create change.

Although we would expect ‘learning to learn’ to be core business in school, it’s actually not often encouraged. Rather, the teachers tells students what to learn and expects the content to be learned in the mode in which it’s presented.

A more agile model might be ‘Just-In-Time’ learning in which students access content when it’s required to solve a problem… not “front-loaded” just in case.

Just-In-Time means that the content is available to access anytime via a variety of modes. Learning is available on-demand and can be accessed when the learner needs it. Sure, not everyone will access all of the content available, then again, who says they need to?

You can do more reading on how industry embraces JIT learning here: https://www.advantageperformance.com/implementing-just-in-time-learning/

Developing Higher Order thinking skills and Growth Mindset also assist in building agility as do building soft skills.

ENTREPRENEURIAL THINKING Digital Literacy, Creativity and Problem Solving are just a few transferrable Entrepreneurial skills that our young people will require for the future of work. Presentation Skills (see Communication) are also on the rise.

What is Entrepreneurial Thinking, anyway? Beyond business, entrepreneurship is a mindset that cultivates a culture to impact the world around us. The World Economic Forum defines entrepreneurship as, “The pursuit of opportunities beyond the resources you currently control” (World Economic Forum, 2009, p9). In 2014, The European Union stated that Entrepreneurial Thinking is creative at its heart and promotes a strong sense of self-worth, initiative and a tolerance of failure.

Although our young people are taking nearly 3 years to be full-time employed after education, the FYA (2019) have identified important factors that can decrease this time.

1. Enterprise skills in education can halve the time required to be full-time employed

2. Relevant paid work can speed up the process by a year

3. Growth Mindset also increases the chances of being full-time employed quicker.

The most important aspect of Entrepreneurial Thinking, though, is access to real-life scenarios in which to find and solve problems.

CESA has an Entrepreneurial and Innovation Network that you can be part of to learn more. See https://registrationcentre.cesa.catholic.edu.au/event-3228265 for more details.

KEEPING TOUCH WITH NOTOSH

No doubt you’ve had a chance to take a look at the NoTosh Lab (https://notosh.com/lab) which is packed full with examples of practice, explanations of why the practice is good, and some suggestions of what you might do next.

If you haven’t already, you can also visit our Facebook page, it is an easy way to tap into the adventures of the NoTosh Team: http://www.facebook.com/NoToshLearning.

Join the conversation now!