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Technology is everywhere

Posted on 16 January 2020

Heidi Fraser-Krauss is the Deputy Registrar and Director of Corporate and Information Services at the University of York. Here she talks about the importance of the Staff Digital Skills Framework, reminding us of how technology is now ubiquitous in our work and personal lives.

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Transcript:

Hello, my name is Heidi Fraser-Krauss and I am the Deputy Registrar and Director of Corporate and Information Services at the University of York and I am here to talk to you about the Digital Skills Framework that we are developing at the University of York.

When I think about technology and skills needed to use technology, well I am reminded by the fact that nearly every job that I know about requires technology in some way, shape or form. Not just our jobs either, in our everyday lives, whether it is online banking, or booking train tickets or booking a journey somewhere, holiday, everything requires technology and there are good figures that suggest that 90% of jobs everywhere require technology in some way, shape or form.

But as we know, technology changes and the skills we have are often picked up along the way. We’re sometimes just left with something, try to understand how to use it better, we fiddle with it, we press bits and we get a way of working which sometimes is good, sometimes isn’t so good, and what we are trying to do here at the University of York is introduce people to good ways of using technology to give people an opportunity to assess what their skills are, what they do well and what they don’t do well, and then provide them with help so that their job can be made easier through the use of technology.

So we’ve developed a skills framework which I think you have heard a bit about and I think it is also important to say that we are keen on using the Google Tools, so we made a decision a number of years ago to go with Google Apps for Education, as it was then called. Those tools have developed and advanced and help us very much in the workplace to do things efficiently and effectively. So that’s what our skills framework is going to be based: around helping people use Google Tools in a good way, so I just want to encourage you to engage with the skills framework to think about how your work could be improved by using technology, using it differently from the way perhaps you use it now, getting away from the old ways of doing it and embracing some of the new ways that Google has to offer and use the support that people in my team and from across the University will be able to offer you. So good luck on that journey, I hope you learn something new and that you are able to make your working practice better, easier, more efficient and more effective.