Independent.ie has an interview with Michael Galvin, the head honcho at Cisco’s Galway, Ireland R&D facility, which opened last November and aims to create 200 jobs within three years.
He says the Galway facility will be “responsible for the application of unified communications in organizations,” and that Cisco chose Galway because of the “strong base of companies involved in telecoms development [in the area]” and the availability of postgraduate skills.
Galvin’s comments reminded me of a news story in April in which Cisco was reported to to have poached some 14 staffers from Nortel’s Ireland R&D facility. And before that in January, a would-be Cisco graduate employee was less than impressed with what Cisco Galway could offer him, saying that the facility emphasized the ‘development’ more than the ‘research,’ which would be carried out in San Jose.
One issue that Galvin discussed in his interview with Independent.ie that was particularly interesting is how to fix the problem of insufficient science and tech grads. He said:
I would say it should be addressed at primary level in school when their minds are open to absorbing science.
My son just sent me an instant message (IM).
Teachers should be open to the tools they use at home which are superior to those at school. They have IM, computer games, the internet; that’s the way they communicate.
The very tools they are using now are the tools they will use in the working world.
Teachers need to realize they are problem-solving and orchestrating knowledge in a different way.
Do you agree?
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