
Jan 2018 – Wuxi International School (WIS), a government owned international school in Wuxi, is successfully accredited as an ICDL Test Centre in China. WIS provide an international education environment for children of foreign nationals living and working in China and is directly under the leadership of the Wuxi Education Bureau. The school adopts ICDL to provide its students with the international assessment tools and testing platform, as well as equipping and developing the teachers with essential ICT skills.
Mr Barry Burney, School Affairs Director, talks about the issue of the ‘digital natives’ generation that lacks proficiency with the tools of the workplace and knowledge of more than the mere surface capabilities of those essential digital tools.
“Most university graduates I know are ineffective and inefficient even with word processing – a basic ‘tool of the trade’ that they have used to type tens of thousands of assignment-words. The majority of digital natives I employ know almost nothing about formatting tables, shortcuts beyond CTRL-C/V and, they format pages by laboriously hammering away at space bars and return/enter keys. It is a nightmare to edit and lays waste the best conceived templates.
ICDL or other skill building and certification curricula are desperately needed to save time, money and stress in my job. Not only that but I expect that showing our Digital Natives the benefits of the ‘advanced civilisation’ of productivity that is currently out of their reach will give them great joy! Their new found efficiency and skill will give them so much more time to swipe, shoot and socialise.”