Chance1234
IS-IT--Management
I didn't want to put this in either of the "if you had to do it again"
threads as im sure someone would take it as an attack on them personally and
will start ranting to the cows come home.
This is more a general view of mine rather than an argument for or against
degree.s.
please read this next line carefully.
"I believe from my experience and knowledge, that the education system
fails"
In the same way , that people leave school with nothing and do succesful, you
also get people who leave universitys with 1:1 who cant do anything other
than right good dissertations.
My definition of a good education system, would be one where everybody came
away with the basics and the skills to be able to take those skills
further and apply those skills.
I can't comment on the USA, but one of the things i found most frustrating
when attempting college/school was the fact that, if i didnt write a XX page
essay on something that instantly meant In the view of my teachers i didnt
understand the subject. If i was set an assignment to read a textbook on the
first world war and answer a question such as "What was life like on the
western front" and then went away and read a different book on the western
front and answered the question from that. I would get a failure because I
didnt answer it from the text book they set, etc etc.
This is where i think the system fails. The system only has one way of doing
things and if you dont do it their way, then you fail. Also, some people get
very good at being good at the system and get passed through coming out
knowing nothing apart from that. The system fails them. If the whole point of
the system is to give people a education and there are both people being
failed and the sytem failing itself, then it can be nothing more than a
failure. I do not like the argument that oh you are always going to get a few
exceptions (dont want to get into politics here -not just yet!)
I am not alone in my next point, which is that people's
thoughts/proceses/brains work in very different ways and people tend to lean
towards one of the three main senses (sight, sound, touch) and whichever of
these senses they lean towards is normally the quickest way of getting
information through to them. This is really cutting down the subject and
leaving huge gaps. but, a lot of what i do involves communicating with people
and i have found that the best tactic to get across information is to
establish what catergory the person im talking to falls in and change
tactics. For example I'm involved in compliance at the moment where getting
the exact information is essential, i or my client can't afford mistakes. I'm
having to deal with several people on one report. I know with one of the
people i can go over with my notepad and pen and draw a few triangle and
squares (oh and a couple of wavey lines) and i get the information i need
from them. Another person involved i can get all i need from talking to them
on the phone. I know when it comes to them doing their contributions on the
report i will do a few wavey line drawings for person A and they will be on
there way and person B ill just give them instructions on the phone.
As said big gaps in the above, but the point here is that whilst in life we
have to adapt. The education system doesnt. It has a fixed view that to know
something you must do X and X , read X and X and then answer X and X. On top
of that we will give you a timelimit to write it all down where we will stick
you under pressure and gives you tons of stress before and on the outcome.
I have a friend who is english but can speak fluent Turkish, Kurdish, Greek.
All self taught from talking to people from those countries. If you asked him
to do say even a GCSE exam in any of those languages at the basic level he
would fail horribly. Also, from experience its a good idea not to let him
anything valuable, breakable or unbalancable ;-)
But then to go the other way for a second, I have to write a hell of a lot of
documentation with my job. I get ribbed enough in TTUK for my spelling and
grammar on this board, but when i come to writing spec, risk, control
documentation etc etc. I can do it literally with my eyes closed. Reason
being is that i have a system in place where i go through in my mind ticking
of this and that, replacing this with whatever name its currently meant to
me, placing this here etc, putting these words here and here and when i come
to type it up, its automatic. If you were to go to every company i worked
for, pulled out all the documentation i had ever written. if you put it side
to side it would all read pretty much identical. Thing is though, its good
documentation and it does what it needs to do. Going back to the point
earlier about some people coming out of university just being able to write
good dissertations is on the same logic. "Start off with Question" , "Put in
debatablle point here ", "Quote so and so here" etc etc.
Don't know if this is just a UK thing, but there is something called "the
what you dont get in an egg" If you ever asked to prepare a presentaion or
speech with little or no deadline. Then use the what you cant get inside an
egg trick.
Very simply
1.introduce the egg and what the shell is made of
2.Then talk about what you dont find in the egg and why for example
you dont find a car inside an egg because its too big
3 .repeat step 2 for however much time you need to fill,
4 . Finally close speech by saying whats inside the egg.
Replace word egg with subject you need to talk about and follow pattern above
for example
may in introduce the XYZ application that we have developed. It is a CD based
package written in Java.
Now you wont find any of the issues that appeared in version 1 as our team
have spent condsiderable time working hard blah blah
You also wont find your time being wasted as it has been designed to be
efficent and streamlined for the business needs
etc , etc
What you will find however, is the solution for your business.
Its a good trick and you can talk about whatver for how ever long you need.
but thats all it is, is a trick. Theres no thought or understanding in it.
At the end of the day, whilst you'll get people at one end of the fence
screaming Look at me i have a degree , you'll never get anyway because you
dont have one. Then at the other end people screaming The school of life is
all you need and a barrow boy smile. I think the majority of us all sit in
the middle of the fence getting on with it swapping stories down the pub.
Now, Learning on the other hand is a different kettle of fish all together and being able to apply what you learn is priceless. you dont need a bit of paper and a hippy friend to be able to benefit from that.
but!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If that is what works for yourself then fine. As this is an IT forum , I think its pretty safe to assume that everyone has at some time have to pick up new skills. the question here is how did you pick them up ? did you attend a evening course with exams and a certificate involved. Did you pick up a few boooks from the libary, forget to read them then crammed in everything on the date they have to be returned ? or did you just simply sit in front of the machine until it worked ? When you take notes at work do you write them out in structured sentences , copy them up later and put in flashy binders. Do you write on the first thing that comes to hand? is your desk covered in post it notes or do you speak all your notes into your PDA? or is a mixture of everything ?
going back to what i was saying about a good education system being the basics and being able to take those skills further and apply them.
There are numerous methods and systems out there for finding out information, remembering information, applying information , working with information out there and i think these skills should be included in the basic.
Someone i recently took on, on the film side i asked them to get their hands on images of medieval Knights, a week later i had no images and called to enquire why, where i was meeted with the reply my internet connection has been down. to which i was fuming. I said what about photocopying images from books , he said he didnt have any books with knights and i said what about the libary and was met by blankness. (young person and i didnt bother asking if they had been to a museum either after that or anything else).
Also, how many times has something you've been working on been held up or failed because someone didnt relay the proper information ?
Finally, Im sure no matter which part of the fence you are sitting on, learning does not stop when you finish school/college/university, so why create a system that is so restrictive ?
Filmmaker, gentleman and [#Error]
threads as im sure someone would take it as an attack on them personally and
will start ranting to the cows come home.
This is more a general view of mine rather than an argument for or against
degree.s.
please read this next line carefully.
"I believe from my experience and knowledge, that the education system
fails"
In the same way , that people leave school with nothing and do succesful, you
also get people who leave universitys with 1:1 who cant do anything other
than right good dissertations.
My definition of a good education system, would be one where everybody came
away with the basics and the skills to be able to take those skills
further and apply those skills.
I can't comment on the USA, but one of the things i found most frustrating
when attempting college/school was the fact that, if i didnt write a XX page
essay on something that instantly meant In the view of my teachers i didnt
understand the subject. If i was set an assignment to read a textbook on the
first world war and answer a question such as "What was life like on the
western front" and then went away and read a different book on the western
front and answered the question from that. I would get a failure because I
didnt answer it from the text book they set, etc etc.
This is where i think the system fails. The system only has one way of doing
things and if you dont do it their way, then you fail. Also, some people get
very good at being good at the system and get passed through coming out
knowing nothing apart from that. The system fails them. If the whole point of
the system is to give people a education and there are both people being
failed and the sytem failing itself, then it can be nothing more than a
failure. I do not like the argument that oh you are always going to get a few
exceptions (dont want to get into politics here -not just yet!)
I am not alone in my next point, which is that people's
thoughts/proceses/brains work in very different ways and people tend to lean
towards one of the three main senses (sight, sound, touch) and whichever of
these senses they lean towards is normally the quickest way of getting
information through to them. This is really cutting down the subject and
leaving huge gaps. but, a lot of what i do involves communicating with people
and i have found that the best tactic to get across information is to
establish what catergory the person im talking to falls in and change
tactics. For example I'm involved in compliance at the moment where getting
the exact information is essential, i or my client can't afford mistakes. I'm
having to deal with several people on one report. I know with one of the
people i can go over with my notepad and pen and draw a few triangle and
squares (oh and a couple of wavey lines) and i get the information i need
from them. Another person involved i can get all i need from talking to them
on the phone. I know when it comes to them doing their contributions on the
report i will do a few wavey line drawings for person A and they will be on
there way and person B ill just give them instructions on the phone.
As said big gaps in the above, but the point here is that whilst in life we
have to adapt. The education system doesnt. It has a fixed view that to know
something you must do X and X , read X and X and then answer X and X. On top
of that we will give you a timelimit to write it all down where we will stick
you under pressure and gives you tons of stress before and on the outcome.
I have a friend who is english but can speak fluent Turkish, Kurdish, Greek.
All self taught from talking to people from those countries. If you asked him
to do say even a GCSE exam in any of those languages at the basic level he
would fail horribly. Also, from experience its a good idea not to let him
anything valuable, breakable or unbalancable ;-)
But then to go the other way for a second, I have to write a hell of a lot of
documentation with my job. I get ribbed enough in TTUK for my spelling and
grammar on this board, but when i come to writing spec, risk, control
documentation etc etc. I can do it literally with my eyes closed. Reason
being is that i have a system in place where i go through in my mind ticking
of this and that, replacing this with whatever name its currently meant to
me, placing this here etc, putting these words here and here and when i come
to type it up, its automatic. If you were to go to every company i worked
for, pulled out all the documentation i had ever written. if you put it side
to side it would all read pretty much identical. Thing is though, its good
documentation and it does what it needs to do. Going back to the point
earlier about some people coming out of university just being able to write
good dissertations is on the same logic. "Start off with Question" , "Put in
debatablle point here ", "Quote so and so here" etc etc.
Don't know if this is just a UK thing, but there is something called "the
what you dont get in an egg" If you ever asked to prepare a presentaion or
speech with little or no deadline. Then use the what you cant get inside an
egg trick.
Very simply
1.introduce the egg and what the shell is made of
2.Then talk about what you dont find in the egg and why for example
you dont find a car inside an egg because its too big
3 .repeat step 2 for however much time you need to fill,
4 . Finally close speech by saying whats inside the egg.
Replace word egg with subject you need to talk about and follow pattern above
for example
may in introduce the XYZ application that we have developed. It is a CD based
package written in Java.
Now you wont find any of the issues that appeared in version 1 as our team
have spent condsiderable time working hard blah blah
You also wont find your time being wasted as it has been designed to be
efficent and streamlined for the business needs
etc , etc
What you will find however, is the solution for your business.
Its a good trick and you can talk about whatver for how ever long you need.
but thats all it is, is a trick. Theres no thought or understanding in it.
At the end of the day, whilst you'll get people at one end of the fence
screaming Look at me i have a degree , you'll never get anyway because you
dont have one. Then at the other end people screaming The school of life is
all you need and a barrow boy smile. I think the majority of us all sit in
the middle of the fence getting on with it swapping stories down the pub.
Now, Learning on the other hand is a different kettle of fish all together and being able to apply what you learn is priceless. you dont need a bit of paper and a hippy friend to be able to benefit from that.
but!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If that is what works for yourself then fine. As this is an IT forum , I think its pretty safe to assume that everyone has at some time have to pick up new skills. the question here is how did you pick them up ? did you attend a evening course with exams and a certificate involved. Did you pick up a few boooks from the libary, forget to read them then crammed in everything on the date they have to be returned ? or did you just simply sit in front of the machine until it worked ? When you take notes at work do you write them out in structured sentences , copy them up later and put in flashy binders. Do you write on the first thing that comes to hand? is your desk covered in post it notes or do you speak all your notes into your PDA? or is a mixture of everything ?
going back to what i was saying about a good education system being the basics and being able to take those skills further and apply them.
There are numerous methods and systems out there for finding out information, remembering information, applying information , working with information out there and i think these skills should be included in the basic.
Someone i recently took on, on the film side i asked them to get their hands on images of medieval Knights, a week later i had no images and called to enquire why, where i was meeted with the reply my internet connection has been down. to which i was fuming. I said what about photocopying images from books , he said he didnt have any books with knights and i said what about the libary and was met by blankness. (young person and i didnt bother asking if they had been to a museum either after that or anything else).
Also, how many times has something you've been working on been held up or failed because someone didnt relay the proper information ?
Finally, Im sure no matter which part of the fence you are sitting on, learning does not stop when you finish school/college/university, so why create a system that is so restrictive ?
Filmmaker, gentleman and [#Error]
