The demand for IT skills is ever-growing in today’s fast-paced digital world. Whether you’re a professional seeking knowledge or a newcomer ready to enter the field, the accessibility and flexibility of online learning have revolutionised how individuals acquire IT skills.
Our Digital World
Everybody is glued to a screen these days. You see them walking through the streets, phones in hand, barely even noticing the world around them. We have our doctor’s appointments on an app; we pay for our groceries with a tap of our phone, and we have Zoom meetings instead of seeing a person, in person. Life has changed, now rather than relying on books for information and utilising our memory and mental arithmetic, we have outsourced our brains to snappy instant information over the World Wide Web.
Intergenerational Society
We have faced a generational cross-over during the period of technological advancement. We have a whole generation of people having no IT skills to speak of, while the following generation of people have your basics, your word processing, and maybe inserting an image, only not very well, and not often where they’d want it… but it’ll have to do.
Then, the follow-on generation had acceptable levels of knowledge, which whilst at school in the 90s made them stand out, they could create a perfectly viable video membership database for their IGCSE Edexcel course and then went on their merry way into tech-savvy jobs, and were looked upon as a technology oracle amongst the previous two less savvy generations.
In more recent years the jump from one bit of technology and knowledge to the next has been gargantuan. Tech-perts who may have spent years learning one method of development now find that 90% of what they have learnt is obsolete, and modern practices suggest that method as a “what not to do”, times change I suppose, the way of the world.
More and more we are looking to the younger generations for advice and help when it comes to IT because it surrounds them at every turn, and they are just more comfortable as a result.
IT is here to stay
So, yes, whether you like it, or not – the way of the modern world is beyond our control and unless we are prepared to move with the times, we are likely to be left behind. Trying to wedge coins into the cashless car parking machine, waiting to be served at a till in McDonalds whilst everyone else has ordered on their app and eaten and left before you have your first soggy chip, and forever waiting to cash in that cheque at the bank that is now a block of apartments.
Now this is not a negative “back in my day” article, although it seems to sound very much like it is. Online can be a scary place for a wide range of people, but one has to admit, technology can make life undeniably easier, and it’s here to stay, so sometimes you have to dive in, headfirst, face your fears and embrace the madness.
A major part of this new way of life, is accepting – “I have got to adapt, and I want to learn”. So, you have to squeeze all the good parts out of IT, and make it work for you.
IT Courses and Qualifications
IT courses and qualifications have changed dramatically, an IT qualification back in the 1980s where you printed your work on a dot matrix printer, and saved your homework on a floppy disk, this will unfortunately cut no mustard here!
When you look into it, really it is quite marvellous what you can do nowadays, you can study IT by using IT, what better way, than to dive in and tackle the modern world head on? You can even study courses like IGCSEs or A Levels that previously were solely to be studied in a sixth form or college, from the comfort of your own home.
Whilst at a traditional school or college you would need to turn up 2 or 3 times a week to attend an hour’s lesson on how to get on with the real world. Sat with a gang of other technophobes – all of whom either need things explaining three or four times over, or wanting to surge on ahead far too quickly from point to point leaving steam coming out of your ears. Learning online makes it far more achievable to reach your goals. You learn at your own pace, once you are on a roll, you decide whether you want to continue for another chapter or quit for the evening whilst you’re ahead. There are no transport issues, or hassle with being late, You don’t lose time because of an absent teacher or a snow day, you choose when you log in and you don’t even need to dress up smartly.
IT offers Flexibility
Not everybody has the option to develop their skills whilst they are working, nor would they want to cancel bingo on a Tuesday afternoon to go and sit in a stuffy classroom full of heat venting computers, so this fits in quite nicely thank you.
Once you have embraced this new way of making IT online work for you, you will find that the world wide web is big and beautiful, full of wonderful helpful folk. They do say that there are no silly questions, and no longer do you have to worry about looking silly. You will encounter forums, blogs reddit, and twitter (X). Post a question, and somebody, somewhere, will often know the answer. You can find help, and learn new things, you can discuss hobbies with like minded souls and feel a part of a community, with people who share your interests. It all sounds rather good doesn’t it?
IT opens doors
You will be surprised by how learning the basics, and just not being afraid of technology can open up doors for you. Once you are a comfortable IT user and you are no longer afraid of that thing stuck in your home office, you will find that your knowledge will snowball quickly. You can learn a different method in problem solving, able to take a complicated, fascinating problem and investigate it down to manageable understandable pieces.
You could really embrace the pathway all the way to university, if you consider that you could potentially take IGCSE courses, at Level 2, A Level courses at Level 3. With A Levels, you can finally gain enough UCAS points to be off to a university. It’s not even to say you have to solely do IT Online courses, you can plan, grow and develop. The convenience of being online opens up a whole new world of potential paths and avenues.
There is no room on the planet for ostriches, and you cannot have your head in the sand any longer. Sometimes you need to take the plunge and embrace the ever-changing world. Being a part of it, rather than resenting it. When you take all the shiny bits that IT offers and make it work for you, you can achieve so much more. It opens so many different avenues, even if you don’t want to directly be involved in IT. IT is all around us, and maybe it hasn’t even touched the surface.
