I’m getting sick and tired of the “excuse,” “Kaya nga ako nag-English” as an excuse not to know basic math concepts and technology concepts.
I’ve been involved in IT education as writer, editor, trainer and consultant largely because part of my personal advocacy is the importance of IT. I do think that technology education should be given as much weight as math, science, and English courses in basic GE. However, since that education policy is still non-existent, we must do something about our current generation of learners.
It is frustrating that in terms of research methodologies, we language scholars are still stuck to early 90s qualitative approaches. Especially in today where research tools for doing corpus-assisted research such as textual analysis software are now widely available. It’s not because the software is too expensive as freeware versions are already coming out. It’s because of students’ limited knowledge on computing.
After a week of research and seminars, I’m compelled to re-examine my takes on e-learning in the Philippine setting. Here’s a post on e-learning as an investment from two years back and here’s on ICT learning in general.
Technology has changed so much over the past three years that I’m out of the industry that the problem with today’s educator is choice rather than the availability of tools and resources. With Web 2.0 technologies reaching a fairly impressive level of sophistication for effective use in education, it’s really quite exciting for educators. But that’s just among the many issues that stakeholders in our context face.
Among these, still is the issue of infrastructure. Schools are still inequipped with proper computer laboratories and enough computers to cover the needs of a school population. There’s also the issue of hardware and software investments. The sheer pace of development in both fronts means that a computer laboratory faces obsolescence in even less than two years.
Oh boy. When I do get into a spending streak, I tend to get on a roll. I’m proud though that my number-crunching has kept my spending still below my monthly earnings. There’s probably only a few people who could beat my compulsion when it comes to monitoring finances. My savings per month aren’t just as high as in previous months though.
It only sucks since I am really liable to GAS. I’m not a real techie but when I buy tech, I want to get the best buck per bang machine that fits my purposes. With the configuration of technology today, it’s pretty hard to get a gadget that hits all of those.
I’ve been really wracking my brain on my next important purchase – my next rig. I’m now playing the semantic game calling the purchase “important” rather than “big.” At least that way, I . I’m really compelled to get a development PC but I’m still split between a new laptop or a desktop.
One career drawback of working from home is that it takes its toll on the social aspect of one’s life and career. As for career advancement, who knows when the recession will end or, God forbid, another dotcom bubble bursts? Not that I’m saying that working online is a dead-end path (since there are huge opportunities that can be had) but it can cause one to get really comfortable or stagnate. That, I don’t want to happen.
The past week and at least the coming have been and will be quite the busy weeks for me. I figured that aside from concentrating solely on my money-making efforts (which are mostly writing jobs), I should also start re-establishing a public face.
My work with the university is quite limited since I’m basically just in when I have classes but otherwise, I’m working elsewhere (at home, actually) and it’s difficult to make an impact when you’re not there. I have had quite the experience in in my former industry (education technology) both in the development side and the business side. If I can only find an opportunity to to converge the two so that I’d be able to weasel my way into two fields with a single effort.
Bryan (who happens to have finally launched Constant Random Change) and I have been discussing all sorts of things from technology to business. One points of our discussion was this observation on management and the technology business by former Ruby on Rails hacker Zed Shaw. Here’s his CUSEC speech where he raised these points.
A bit of tech discussions in the middle but the juicier points on management and business can be had after. This is a real treat for any graduate of tech who plans to make money using related skills.
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