A Microsoft Corp. official said Thursday he worries about the lack of attention being paid to technological innovation in U.S. schools to produce the "highly educated and technically proficient workers that can fuel our economy."

Speaking to the Montana Board of Education, Martin Bean, general manager for education strategy, products and solutions at the company based in Washington state, said that education in math and science is considered the key to maintaining a competitive workforce in the global economy.

He commended Montana for its high international rankings in the National Assessment of Educational Progress science tests taken by eighth graders.

Bean said the education landscape is changing greatly and quickly. In 2005, he said, 3.2 million students nationally took at least one online course rather than in a college classroom.

Many of today's students are highly skilled at computers and at different ways to get information online through podcasts, You Tube and other means.

Bean suggested that universities ought to offer classes -- and credits -- through these means as well as in traditional classrooms.

Up to 25 percent of colleges and universities are "building podcasts (of classes) into their strategic plans," Bean said.

Podcasts are downloaded on computers and played back either on the computer or an MP3 player like an iPod. What's more, podcasting classes are "heading to K-12 schools like a freight train," he said.

"For us to resist all of these alternative ways of acquiring knowledge complicates the challenge," Bean said. He added that those who use these methods "want to get credit for the way they learn."

Bean laid out some statistics by asking the members of the combined boards of Regents and Public Education, Gov. Brian Schweitzer, Superintendent of Public Instruction Linda McCulloch and others if they knew that:

- 25 percent of the population in China with the highest intelligence quotients is greater than the total population in the United States.

- China soon will be the No. 1 English-speaking country in the world.

- If every single U.S. job today were shipped to China, China would still have a labor surplus.

- The number of text messages sent and received each day exceeds the population of the planet.

- Each month, there are more than 3.7 billion searches performed on Google.

Bean said the United States stands "at an inflection point in our history," with the pace of change accelerating.

The United States must face up to the challenge, he said, and figure out how to take advantage of it.

"We need to adequately educate our citizens on new types of work," he said.

The only way for states like Montana to sustain themselves is to produce a skilled, qualified labor force, Bean said.

He urged universities to give students college credit for every hour, regardless of where they earned it.

Bean said 90 percent of U.S. manufacturers say they face moderate to severe shortages of skilled workers.

Some 300,000 skilled information technology jobs have gone unfilled the past decade because of the lack of qualified applicants.

Microsoft, he said, has between 3,500 and 4,500 open jobs at any time in the United States because it can't find people with the right skill levels.

He said American workers need to have strong technical skills and strong computer skills.

"Education is absolutely everything," Bean said.

He added that workforce development must provide opportunities for workers to get post-secondary education and training opportunities.