Education more than algebra and alliteration

Is our education system rapidly becoming archaic as we plunge headlong into a world where people trade their DNA on eBay? Where virtual supply chains and on-demand products rule? And where people conduct virtual romances with people they've only met through cyberspace?

Today's educators are faced with a myriad of challenges as they prepare young people for a society so heavily reliant on an industry -- the ICT industry -- that changes so rapidly.

Thought leaders in education are now suggesting that the top 10 in-demand jobs for 2010 did not exist in 2004. If this is the case, how do we prepare the next generation of workers for technologies that are not yet invented?

This question is vitally important to business leaders, educators, parents and politicians in today's world. Together, we must examine the way we are educating our kids.

Currently, we estimate that almost 80 percent of Australians are in the information-making business -- creating something in the workplace that you can't drop on your foot.

ICT is the future -- and a future evolving at an exponential rate. Ensuring our young people receive the best education possible is not so much about algebra and alliteration, but arming them with the knowledge and skills they will need to ensure our country continues to develop and prosper.

So, the survival skills of the future will be about learning how to find and assess the very latest information. In a digital world, it will be those who ask the right questions, not those who know the answers.