The Future of Work Video Response

In the video The Future Of Work,  I found myself having a strong reaction to many of the proposed ideas and facts presented. Here are 3 of the things that really stuck me:

1. 10 years ago, social networking did not exist. 10 years before that, the web did not exist.

• It is interesting to me that social networking is such a huge part of most people's daily life and yet it has only been around for a short period of time. Employers are using this as a means of checking out potential employees, businesses are using it as a main source of advertising, and individuals are being tracked to see what their interests are and provide information better suited to them. It is hard to believe that with the amount of time, money, and resources poured into Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc, that they are relatively new.

2. CrowdSourcing- to split a task into smaller pieces and unleash it to millions of people around the world.

• I was shocked to learn that the secondary purpose of Captcha is to identify words a computer cannot when digitally converting published texts. I knew that the primary purpose was to verify a human was using whatever web service the Captcha phrase might be attached to, but I had no idea there was more to it than that. 

3. In 2006 28 million Americans worked in a virtual team at least one day per month.

• It is hard to believe that 28 million people participated in some kind of virtual team associated with the workplace, and on a monthly basis. That was 7 years ago...by now the number has surely skyrocketed. In the future it is easy to see how the "workplace" is likely not to be a "place" at all. While there will always be certain vocations that require a physical presence, it is staggering to think of how many do or will not in coming years.

I feel that my K-12 experiences have not done a lot to prepare me for the future of work in this new digital age. Then again, I did graduate high school 7 years ago. My college experiences however, have helped keep me more up to date on ways to use digital media and communication effectively in the workplace. 

In the field of education, technology is going to continue to play a crucial role in the way students learn and communicate. And I feel learning and adapting to these technologies in the classroom (or perhaps virtual classrooms, even) should take precedence, in order to reflect the changing face of the job market and better prepare students to be able to enter the workforce as competent individuals.