Deanne Pittman, Centretown News
Namir Anani, CEO of the Information and Communications Technology Council, worked with Microsoft Canada and the Ottawa Catholic School Board to encourage students to work in the technology sector.Canada must produce more digital talent in order to succeed in the modern economy, says a recent report published by the Information and Communications Technology Council.
There will be more than 182,000 new high-paying jobs within the technology industry by 2019. But Canadian schools simply aren’t teaching students the skills they need to succeed in the digital economy, according to the ICTC report.
The Centretown-based council teamed up with dozens of corporations and schools to create a national strategy on developing digital talent, including Microsoft Canada, Invest Ottawa and the Ottawa Catholic School Board. The 51-page report calls for major changes in education, government policy and practices within the private sector.
Canada’s IT industry already generates $74 billion per year, and the report says the global digital economy will exceed $19 trillion by 2020. This means there is a strong demand for skilled workers in the IT sector, says Namir Anani, president and CEO of the ICTC.
Demand means growth, and job growth in the digital economy is expanding at four times the rate of any other sector, says Anani.
That’s good news, as Ottawa’s unemployment rate rose to 6.6 per cent in February, according to Statistics Canada. The national unemployment rate also climbed to 7.3 per cent last month.
“The base of our economy is changing very rapidly,” says Anani, explaining that it’s shifting away from natural resources towards the IT sector and the emerging sharing economy. This means workers need new skills to meet these growing demands.
There are a number of strategies the government can use to prepare skilled workers for this evolving economy. This starts with the education system, says Dennis Lopes, Microsoft Canada’s director of legal and corporate affairs.
“We need to prepare youth for the jobs of the future. By 2020 there will be a further 36,000 jobs that we’ll struggle as a country to fill because of a lack of tech talent,” says Lopes.
Digital skills have become a foundational discipline for students to learn much like literacy and arithmetic, says Lopes.
“Youth today are great users of technology. They often enjoy gaming or social media. But how do you get young people to start thinking about becoming creators?” says Lopes.
That’s exactly what the Ottawa Catholic School Board is doing by working with the ICTC on the report, says Brenda Wilson, superintendent of learning technologies.
“We’re really focused on kids learning how to code. The learning is super hands on,” says Wilson.
The school board devoted a large portion of its budget towards integrating new technologies in its classrooms, says Wilson. Those funds came from the provincial ministry of education, which granted students the opportunity to interact and engage with technology.
“The learning environment becomes a place you can personalize, so kids get what they need and then they are able to discover what they’re capable of.”
This self-discovery is especially important for female students, says Wendy Warren, executive director of Ladies Learning Code’s local chapter.
“Girls are told at a young age that coding and computer science aren’t necessarily for them, but they’re just as capable,” says Warren.
The IT sector remains a male-dominated industry, but encouraging girls to pursue computer science will help diversify the workforce, she says.
Lopes agrees, and says that the people creating new digital technologies should reflect the people consuming them.
“Unfortunately, today in the IT sector we have a diversity issue that we need to address. Although women make up half the workforce generally, they only make up about a quarter of the IT workforce,” says Lopes.
That’s why it’s important to recognize technical skills are a tool of empowerment for women and girls, says Warren.
These learning opportunities are also necessary for students preparing to enter the workforce, she says.
“You think of all these people on their devices with their heads down just ‘geeking out’ but it’s not like that in the classroom,” says Wilson.
Children can work in smaller groups, research independently on laptops and engage with information in new and exciting ways, says Wilson.
Ultimately, this allows children to be more creative and collaborative in the classroom, she says. It also means they’re learning the skills they need to thrive in the emerging digital economy.