People in the education and training field are more susceptible to nonsense and fads than a giddy teenager with a movie star magazine.

Poorly educated and often low talented refugees from public schools are migrating into training. Why not, students behave in class, the pay is better, and the administration has a goal. Unfortunately, they have brought all the useless foolishness they learned in schools of education with them.

Much of the drivel we are subjected to under the guise of new training techniques is worthless. After sifting through the overblown verbiage, buzz words, and politically correct stupidity you still teach the same way. Neither people not business have changed; determine the need, create a course to solve the need. Evaluate the people who have to be trained and adjust teaching accordingly.

So the next generation can play video games and surf the net. Whoopee! Can they format a Word document, understand a tech manual, or follow instructions? They will have to be trained to fit into the work force just like all their predecessors.

Lester L. Stephenson
Technical Trainer
Hayssen Packaging Technologies

I think that Mr. Bauser is missing a major point in the Boomer retirement issue. It isn't that the "only capable, experienced people in America are over 50", it's moreso that there are far fewer capable, experienced people in America to fill their chairs when they're gone. From my reading, it's not (just) about skills, it's about the headcount.

Even if the generations coming behind were extremely talented (not going to get into whether we are or not), to be short the 15-50% of the warm bodies needed to run the show, we'd better have a Plan B, with B standing for: Business-Not-At-All-As-Usual.

Clearly, doing the same (or more) with less is the rally cry: Automating processes, streamlining workflows and streamlining org charts, etc...

Thanks for a great newsletter!

Crystal

Hi, Kevin.
Adam’s response seemed a bit spiteful :)
Saying that someone is a Gamer, Digital Native, or whatever is not a negative or positive statement. It is a label-- a description that may help one learn about another. True, the labels are much too general and simplistic, but it is true that we need to understand where they are coming from and how they do and prefer to communicate. If they live differently than digital immigrants, we should know how and why—then help span the boundary to help communication among the shades of native/immigrant levels. To leave this out of the audience identification is to assume that there is only one learning style – now that’s crap.

As a doctoral student, I am interested in understanding how natives value relationships built online. I have grown hearing that nothing can replace good old face-to-face communication – it’s how you know and trust someone-- like looking them in the eye and a firm handshake. It seems that we need to understand, appreciate, and embrace cultural differences if we are going to grow as a world community. Not looking for cultural differences is akin to judging an African or Asian who does not look you in the eye as insincere or untrustworthy. Unfortunately, it’s ethnocentric because they are taught to show respect by not looking others in the eye – especially superiors. I look to some gamers as culturally different because, in many respects, they are. It’s a good thing. I suspect they do not need to have to same amount of face-to-face to build rapport and be even more efficient workers than many predecessors.

I say yes to changing the fundamentals of education and business--not to compensate, but to embrace their highly trained ability for high situation awareness. Like any type of team, diversity within the team actually helps it.

Just my 2 cents :)

Have a great day!
Frank Latendresse
3rd Year Doctoral Student, Leadership Studies
Bowling Green State University

To Adam Bauser I just want to say, Amen Brother!

What I love is that in no time in history have we had a greater percentage of college educated people with that trend only increasing, yet you would think that once the baby boomers retire all knowledge and wisdom will just evaporate away.

A. Charles Zoffuto
eLearning Consultant
LandAmerica Financial Group

He calls the idea of the gamers analysis simplistic, yet his retort is loaded with vague and emotional "simplistic" curses and denials. I am turned off from further investigation into his case by his sophormoric and childish choice of language. Be an adult, Adam Bauser!

Chuck Harmon
Instructional Designer

What we haven't forgotten is how to recognize and respect the generation that preceded us, fought for us and handed us the highest standard of living on the planet. And we've apparently forgotten to pass along a little value called 'respect for elders' as well.

Joe Yesesky

Kevin,

recent research carried out by Professor Kevin Durkin at Strathclyde University (UK) and various colleagues has shown that those who play video games to a moderate amount have better social skills and higher Grade point averages than those who do not play at all. Additionally, those who can be classified as heavy players also do better on these measures than those who do not play (although they do not do as well as the moderate players).

regards

merv

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merv stapleton
e-Learning manager
city of sunderland college

I agree with the first para you quoted in the email. When I was in school there was no learner-centric anything, and us boomers put men in space. Of course, we had the advantage of blended learning way back then - a text book to read and work problems from, a teacher to help us learn, film strips and movies to illustrate concepts and depict events....

Regarding his second para -- it's already happening. It's most noticeable in the service industry, but incompetence is rampant and getting worse. I constantly have to interact with people who don't a clue as to how to do their job adequately, therefore don't, and get indignant when they're expected to.

My personal favorite indicator is the degradation of the language, specifically subject-verb agreement. The phrase "there are" and it's contraction, "there're" are becoming extinct, both replace by "there's" regardless of whether the subject is singular or plural. Even newscasters are doing it. (It's so much more obvious than replacing you're with your, which is only apparent when written.)

Flame off...

Cordially,

Michael Burke