Webucator challenge: what skills would be most important for our youngest kids to start learning as soon as they can?

Webucator has challenged me to give my opinion on what will be the most valuable skill in 2015, based on my own background.

I’m a chemist working in materials science, in the research academic institution Catalan Institute for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, so without any doubt I’ve to say that one of the most valuable skills in my workplace is multidisciplinarity. This seems cheating, since it can include so many skills in just one, but the trick here is articulation.

Multidisciplinarity is the ability to articulate what you know with what you foresee that you’ll need to know, and blend it together in your background knowledge so all your knowledge works as an unit. And it’s applicable both to higher education academics, industry people, and, yes, kids.

Living in a globalized society also means that we can’t sit still inside our own bubble, and also is demonstrating that we need adapt to cope with fast pace changing situations. This is why I think multidisciplinarity is a favourite skill for the future: do your best in your work, but never stop learning from many fields to project yourself in wider fronts and also to have means to adapt if some project is not working as good as expected.

Good luck!

Cheers

C.