Recently I was engaging in that most dreaded of activities for the parent of any senior school pupil, maths homework!
Specifically, algebra and when your child has lived its entire life believing that Dad pretty much knows everything, the realisation as you read questions that look just like a bunch of jumbled letters and numbers that you have no clue where to start is chilling.
However, as I desperately tried to recall lessons from well over thirty years ago and was silently agreeing with her assertions of “anyway what is the point of algebra” she began to utilise other means to get the homework done as fast possible (always her most desired outcome!), I was too slow.
Very quickly she had opened a group chat which she informed me was restricted to her ‘Cohort’ and included a number of “brainiacs”. Apparently, although they are forbidden from simply ‘Googling’ the answers (of course) they are allowed to cross check their workings with their mates (I think we would call that a peer review).
Anyway, within 20 minutes the homework, which I admit would have taken me at least an hour to work through and check had been completed, the process of the group chat Q&A had reinforced the learning and she was on to more important things such as Snapchat gossip!
The point here is this, by 2019 there will be over 17 million millennials in the UK and by 2025 they will make up to 75% of the workforce. They are demanding that their IT enables them to work in this way (better and faster) and if they can’t, the best of them will go elsewhere.
The technology to support this is already available in for example Cisco Spark or Microsoft Teams, so if you want to attract and keep the best talent in your organisations you need to invest in Collaboration Now!
