Just found this skills learning map while on Microsoft’s website for a book to assist me in studying for the Windows 7 exam 70-680.
Nice concept, it certainly breaks down the steps involved in getting into IT (from a Microsoft point on view anyway).
Unfortunately, most of the people I know would fail before they have even hit the first fork in the trail, ‘Digitaly Aware Individual’. Given how much we have come to depend and trust in computers and technology, I sometimes find it a bit alarming how little some people know about how PC and their software work.
Modern systems are admittedly much more reliable than the ones of a decade ago, but when I first started out with PC’s and software, everyone knew about backups. These days I ask people about how they are safe guarding all their data that is ‘irreplaceable’ and they shrug their shoulders and look confused and mutter ‘it’s stored on the computer somewhere’.
I possibly am a little extreme about this sort of thing. I know exactly where my data is, and I have backups of my backups (well, certainly optical disc burns of the really irreplaceable stuff, photos of events past, my library of system administration scripts that I so painstaking have amassed over the years, archived email conversations that I like to look back on from time to time). But, given that anyone you ask will tell you their data is essential to their plives and completly irreplaceable, you would think they would invest a little time into researching how best to make sure it does not all end in tears later down the line.
Anyone can drive a car, the act of driving is not the hard part. The lessons and the reading, the written exam, the highway code and the actual driving test itself merely allow you to drive the car (simple) without posing a danger to yourself or to others (the more difficult part).
In the same way you are not allowed to drive a car without first passsing a test, maybe there should perhaps a mandatory training course that you must attend before being allowed to purchase a PC that covers the basics enough so that you can pull away from the curb without loosing your entire baby picture libarary and wedding day mpeg collection and winding up a teary eyed wreck at your local branch of PC World.
