tech-ed collisions

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on career development

This week I was fortunate enough to attend the first two days of the National Career Conference run by the Career Development Association of Australia. The conference was really useful for me and gave me some great insights into the fantastic work careers counselors do, along with information on a number of programs the Government is funding. This was the first such conference I have attended which is a shame really as it would have been quite interesting to draw comparisons with earlier conferences. There were two quite overwhelming impressions that I took away from my time at the conference. The first and most significant is the impact of the Global Financial Crisis. This was a recurring topic among many of the speakers and quite worrying for a number of the delegates that I spoke to. We are heading into the some of the more difficult economic times in living memory for many of us and those who work in the career development industry are going to play a very important role. As difficult economic times really start to hit hard, many workers will face difficult transitions and harsh times. New entrants into the workforce will also find it very difficult as employment rates rise and the jobs just aren't there. How different this is from just a year ago when we were full of optimism, the mining boom was just going from strength to strength etc and the largest problem seemed to be skills shortages. About a year ago we were seeing videos on Youtube and presentations on Slideshare providing all sorts of wonderful statistics on the changes that technology is bringing about (global mobile phone adoption, increase in use of Internet technologies, amazing social networking statistics, living online, the impact of the Web on our lives and changes in attitudes (eg the rising percentage of marriages where partners met online), and perhaps one of the more interesting, many of the jobs that students will get when they enter the workforce haven't been invented yet). About that last one - now we are looking at something like the jobs just might not exist! So how do we prepare for such an uncertain future? The rate of change is still going to apply - there will be new types of jobs as not much seems to be able to stop the rapid march of new and emerging technologies and the impact that they have on society but we are still facing very uncertain economic times. Difficult questions indeed and it would be interesting to be at the rest of the conference to see how it progresses. The second impression that I took away from the conference was the apparent lack of engagement with technology in this area. The key theme for the conference was 'Get Smart: Career Development value adds for people and business'. Now of course we don't need to have or use high technology to be smart but there are many ways in which it can help. I would think that preparing people for a career in the 21st Century well would almost have to involve technology at some level. While there was some technology featured on the stands in the exhibition area I don't think it really compared to what you see in other education related conferences these days. Whenever I have been fortunate enough to attend an event in the VET or Higher Ed sector there has also been an online 'buzz' about the event with many users of Twitter or bloggers sharing their insights online as it happens and getting together online and consequently offline. I wasn't able to tap into any of this activity at the event and I don't think it was there. So for me the question is whether there is opportunity to add value in the area of career development with technology or whether it doesn't really need it or whether I just missed it? In summary must say that there are some great technology resources in the careers area such as Myfuture and it wasn't possible for me to attend all workshops (parallel streams). Perhaps it was just the lack of laptops and netbooks in people's hands/laps between and in sessions that gave me this impression.