The New Pillars of Modern Teaching by Allen Gayle;

Author:Allen, Gayle;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Solution Tree
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Curation in Action: Programmers

Computer programmers are the new rock stars of the knowledge economy. There are more than one million software developers in the United States, and that job market is expected to grow by a dizzying 22 percent over the next decade (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014b). Their median pay in 2012 was almost $95,000 per year, with many earning higher amounts straight out of college. The best programmers receive weekly calls and emails from recruiters hoping to lure them with promises of more money and better perks, with talent agencies such as 10x advertising unabashedly that “the very best programmers are superstars” (Widdicombe, 2014). While many of us might be tempted to think that programmers still fit the media stereotype of geeks toiling away in obscurity, developers such as Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are among the most recognizable faces in the world.

These elite developers’ secret is their commitment to learning, and a major driver of that learning is curation. Developers are voracious consumers (and producers) of content. Change is built into the field’s DNA—new programming languages, coding techniques, operating systems, features, architecture, storage methods, and capabilities—and good programmers are relentless in their desire to stay up-to-date on how technologies are evolving. A quick glance at the statistics surrounding Stack Overflow—an online forum where programmers gather to discuss their craft—shows that the site receives over fifty-million unique visitors per month. Perhaps even more mind blowing, over 92 percent of programming questions posted on the site are answered in a median time of just eleven minutes (Mamykina, Manoim, Mittal, Hripcsak, & Hartmann, 2011).

We may wonder why educators should care about programmers’ work, but there are at least two important connections between us.

1. We are both learning workers in fields undergoing transformation and disruption: For programmers, it’s the evolution and improvement of coding languages; for educators, it’s the new pedagogical approaches created through increased abundance and access.

2. Programmers represent a prototypical example of the kinds of jobs available to 21st century graduates: Therefore, the skills they need to stay competitive are the kinds of skills our students need now and after they graduate, no matter which field they pursue.

Traditional approaches to curriculum born in the era of the Carnegie Unit can’t begin to provide content with the speed, variety, and agility these kinds of learners need. That’s not to say that programmers never take a workshop or a course or earn a degree. They do those things all the time. It’s just that they realize that by the time the class is over, some of what they’ve learned is probably already outdated. That’s what keeps them curating. They need to know which languages are becoming more popular, which new approaches to coding save the most time, and what other changes are shifting their field. And these changes are not limited strictly to programming languages. The best developers monitor fields such as data science, design, and visualization to augment their skills.

So how do they do it? It’s a process of trial and error that acknowledges at the start that they don’t have all the answers.

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