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January 6-7, 2011, MPICT again co-hosted its Winter ICT
Educator Conference in downtown San Francisco, together with
the
National ICT Center. Joining us in hosting this event were
the
Boston-area Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC),
an NSF ATE funded Regional Center, like MPICT, and the
Center for
System Security and Information Assurance (CSSIA), an NSF
ATE funded National Resource Center.
More than 175 people attended on a given day, including
community college faculty in ICT related programs, college
administrators, representatives of industry and others.
 Winter
Conference attendees were welcomed at the opening session at
Microsoft’s Market Street conference room by City College of
San Francisco Chancellor, Dr. Don Q. Griffin. MPICT Executive
Director, James Jones, then provided an opening presentation
about the strategic importance of ICT, the ICT workforce and
ICT education.
In the information and knowledge economies of the 21st
century, we increasingly depend on ICT. Students, employees,
employers and citizens increasingly rely on ICT for
information, communication, productivity, commerce and access
to services. Yet, ICT is very chaotic and confusing to many.
As a society, we need to be sure people in all of these roles
have the knowledge and skills needed to benefit from ICT and
participate in our digital economies and society.
This is strategically important to our society, and an ICT
framework helps raise awareness of that strategic importance
by counting together, like many other countries do, industries
and jobs that the U.S. usually counts as separate things.
 According
to MPICT’s Phase 2 California ICT study:
ICT Industries in California represent:
• About 46,000 companies
• 4% of all companies
• Ranked 12th of CA industries by firm count
• Almost $172 billion in revenue
• 6% of CA private sector revenues
• 6th of CA industries by revenues
• About a million California workers
• 4% of the workforce, 1 in 25 jobs
• 12th of CA industries by employee counts
• About $76 billion in wages
• 12% of private sector wages
• 2nd of private sector industries by wages paid
• Wages per employee twice the state average
• Significant job growth approaching 20% expected for ICT
industries from 2006 to 2016
Aggregate ICT industry wages rank 2nd in the State. Whereas,
the closest existing category “Information” ranks 7th and
appears to be declining, because it includes non-ICT
industries like newspapers, which are experiencing declines.
 U.S.
ICT Employment was about 7.6 million
workers in 2008:
• 5% of all private sector jobs; 1 in 20 jobs
• employment growth of 14% expected between 2008-2018
• representing over one million new positions and 275,000
annual new and replacement jobs
California ICT Employment was about a million jobs in 2010:
• 5% of all jobs; 1 in 20 jobs in 2010
• 12% employment growth, or 130,000 new jobs expected between
2006 and 2016
• 46,000 annual new and replacement jobs in California over
the period
• Median ICT Workforce hourly wage about twice the median wage
for all jobs across the state
• 8th largest occupational cluster by job count.
That is bigger and more important than many people realize,
including policymakers and educational system planners.
Recognizing that should lead to more attention for efforts to
support ICT industry, ICT workforce development and ICT
education.
80% of California firms either agree or strongly agree that
information and communications technologies are important to
the productivity of their organizations.
California companies anticipate 3.8% overall employment growth
over the next 2 years, consistent with other California
employment growth estimates. However, companies providing ICT
goods and/or services expect 8.5% employment growth, and those
that do not expect overall employment to shrink by 0.4% over
the next 2 years.
Companies providing ICT goods and/or services expect 11.2%
growth in employment for people with ICT workforce skills over
the next two years, compared with overall employment growth
expectations of 8.5%. While companies that do not provide ICT
goods and/or services expect -.4% overall employment growth,
they expect 3.7% growth in employment of people with ICT
workforce skills.
Over half of California firms report difficulty recruiting
employees with appropriate ICT skills and training. These
findings are surprising given the high rates of unemployment
in the state.
We need to find a more consistent and friendly way of talking
about ICT. Now, many people are confused by the many varying
messages about ICT, inconsistent use of language, the use of
too much technical jargon, and the many different perspectives
on what is important in this rapidly changing field. We need
to use plain language talking about ICT with people who are
not already insiders: policymakers, administrators, counselors
and prospective students.
A simple framework MPICT is trying out is:
Today, everyone should be an ICT User. Everyone needs to be
able to work with computers and basic computer applications.
Everyone needs to be able to access and use the Internet –
safely and productively. This is the base level of the
pyramid. This dimension of “Digital Literacy” (ICT skills,
information literacy, and media literacy) should be addressed
in K-12 education, and community colleges should help students
in all fields develop this capacity.
The line above the ICT Users pyramid base level represents
entry-level positions supporting ICT Users, so they can be
productive.
The middle “ICT Enablers” level represents the IT operations
of organizations. At this level, applied technologists,
technicians and managers deploy mature ICT technologies to
provide organizational ICT infrastructure for their users and
ICT systems. There are a lot of jobs at this level, and
community colleges can play a big role developing the ICT
workforce at this level.
At the top of the pyramid are ICT Creators, people with a
deeper understanding of mathematics, computer science,
software engineering, computer engineering, electrical
engineering and business, who design and develop new ICT
technologies and solutions to business needs and problems.
This critical innovation layer drives economic development and
growth. Contributors at this level frequently have advanced
degrees and experience, but community colleges help students
advance to this level through transfer pathways to 4-year
colleges and universities.
The line between ICT Creators and ICT Enablers represents
people in roles between product and service development and
market deployment. These are sales, engineering and marketing
roles that interact with business and IT operation customers
to gather requirements, design solutions and help with custom
implementations.
ICT is not limited to ICT industries. ICT is pervasive, an
integral and growing part of all industries.
Stock markets and financial services industries depend on ICT.
The Biotech industry would not exist without ICT. ICT is
increasingly built into manufacturing processes. Government
increasingly uses ICT to deliver government services. There is
a large push now to improve efficiencies of healthcare
industries by integrating ICT into its processes: Healthcare
IT. ICT is everywhere.
A modification of the ICT Pyramid attempts to reflect that:
There are industry-specific ICT devices, software, systems and
solutions that are important for the ICT workforce in many
industries. Knowledge of financial trading systems is
important in financial services industries, for example. There
are recordkeeping, security, reporting and regulatory
requirements specific to many industries that create
specialized requirements for the ICT workforce. Similarly,
many (large) enterprises have proprietary or specialized
hardware, software and solutions that require ICT workforce
support. These dimensions exist for ICT Users, Enablers and
Creators.
Thursday’s keynote presentation was provided by Jim Spohrer,
Director of IBM University Programs World Wide, on “The
Emerging Pervasive Networked Computing Explosion and its
Impact on Society, ICT Workforce and Technician Educators.” He
referred to MPICT’s Phase 2 California ICT study and MPICT’s
ICT Pyramid.
IBM has great experience at the ICT Creator level of the
pyramid. IBM develops ICT technologies and solutions to solve
problems and meet the needs of many of the world’s largest
organizations. One of IBM’s observations is demand for what it
calls “T-Shaped Professionals” at every level. These are
people with specialized knowledge and skills, which allow them
to contribute something unique, the vertical bar in a “T”,
combined with a broad understanding of society, organizations,
teamwork, business and ICT functions, the horizontal bar in a
“T”.
To really be successful in the workforce, employees need both
dimensions, and community colleges should be helping their
students in both dimensions.
He then described a very exciting macro-economic development,
the application of ICT in large public sector operations. ICT
has revolutionalized the operations and productivity of all
kinds of private industries and organizations. Soon, we will
see widespread implementations of ICT to improve the
operations and productivity of large scale public operations,
like transportation systems, water systems, electrical grids,
and public building operations.
Deploying large sensor networks, information processing
systems and controls will allow traffic systems, electrical
grids and buildings to operate more efficiently, improving the
quality of people’s lives and greatly reducing greenhouse gas
emissions, creating a “Smarter Planet.” IBM and other ICT
Creators are hard at work designing these solutions today.
Implementing these solutions will require large numbers of
applied technologists, to go out in the physical world and
install and operate these systems. These are roles that cannot
be easily outsourced abroad, and this is a great ICT workforce
development opportunity for community colleges.
Friday’s keynotes were provided by the ICT Center’s Director
Gordon Snyder on “Emerging Broadband Technological
Developments” and HI-TEC 2009 Educator of the Year Mike
Qaissaunee on “Teaching and Learning: The Widening Gap Between
Faculty and the Digital Student.” Both were well received.
Around 10am each day, we migrated to the City College of San
Francisco Downtown Campus, on the corner of 4th and Mission
Streets, for breakout sessions, meals and social events.
At least two of at least five simultaneous sessions were
hands-on or interactive in college computer labs, where
participants were able to engage with ICT technologies.
The theme of this year’s Winter Conference was “Improving ICT
Education in Challenging Times.” Even in difficult times, we
can improve ICT education if we come together and share
successful practices, ideas and resources we don’t all take
advantage of. Presenters shared some extraordinary information
and stories. Topics were listed in the
previous quarterly
newsletter.
Highlights included an announcement by the Juniper Networks
Academic Alliance of a powerful new hosted lab environment
that makes teaching Juniper more effective and affordable for
community colleges. The VMware Academy announced a similar
Netlab enabled solution to make labs readily accessible and
affordable for teachers adopting virtualization curriculum.
The quality and variety of presentations was very high, from
business and industry, community college educators, NSF
Centers and community college ICT faculty.
Travel is difficult for educators in this difficult economic
climate. To help, MPICT and the ICT Center provided stipends
and partial expense reimbursements to many of the qualified
community college faculty attendees.
For those who were not able to attend, we made most conference
sessions available free, in real time via the Internet, using
CCC Confer. We had people attend from many parts of the
country.
Additionally, most conference sessions were recorded and
archived. They are available for viewing from any computer, at
any network speed, from anywhere, at any time for free at
http://mpict.org/2011_winter_conference_recordings.html.
That way, the impact of these great sessions is not limited to
those who could be physically present in the room at that
time. Check them out!
Sessions from the 2010 Winter Conference, available at
http://mpict.org/pdf/Presentations/Winter 2010 ICT
Educator Conference Agenda and Archive 2-4-09.xls, have
been viewed more than 1,500 times.
To make it even easier, many of these sessions, and a number
of interviews with attendees, have been converted and are
available for viewing on MPICT’s YouTube Channel at
http://www.youtube.com/mpictcenter.
Because many attendees report that networking opportunities
and connections made at this event are among its most valuable
aspects, Thursday evening included a social event, hosted by
Cengage Learning, where attendees relaxed and built
relationships.
Evaluations provided great input on how to improve events in
the future, and the overall event was considered valuable by
most.
Back to Q1 2011
Newsletter |
