Testing tech literacy

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, February 2, 2006

When it comes to downloading music and instant messaging, today’s students are plenty tech-savvy. But that doesn’t mean they know how to make good use of the endless stream of information that computers put at their fingertips.

Educators and employers call those skills technology literacy, and while everyone agrees it’s important, it also is difficult to measure. A test that some high school students will begin taking this year could help.

The ICT Literacy Assessment touches on traditional skills such as analytical reading and math, but with a technological twist. Test takers, for instance, may be asked to query a database, compose an e-mail based on their research, or seek information on the Internet and decide how reliable it is.

The test’s initials stand for Information and Communication Literacy, and a version is already used by some colleges. Today, the nonprofit Educational Testing Service will announce details of a new version that some high school and first- and second-year college students will begin taking in the spring.

Educational Testing Service also owns and administers the SAT, but says this isn’t designed as a college admissions test. Rather, the goal is to show schools whether their students know how to use technology effectively and responsibly.

But the exam may prove difficult to sell to schools in an era of tight budgets and concern about overtesting. And technology literacy skills aren’t as precisely testable as, say, geometry.

Still, Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service says educators increasingly recognize that the three R’s have to be mastered not just on paper but also as part of the tech-heavy 21st-century workplace. Education officials in Texas and West Virginia are monitoring early results to see if the test proves useful.

“Students know how do a lot of things with their iPod, but what is the educational value of accessing a lot of information?” said Anita Givens, senior director for instructional materials and educational technology at the Texas Education Agency, which is also considering whether the test could help evaluate teachers.

“Having a lot of information at your fingertips is like going to the library and not reading anything.”

Students will receive an individual score on a point scale of 400 to 700, and schools will get reports showing how students fare in seven core skills: defining, accessing, managing, integrating, evaluating, creating and communicating information.

The new core version that will be sold to high schools can be taken in a school computer lab in about 75 minutes and consists of 14 short tasks, lasting three to five minutes each, and one longer task of about 15 minutes.

Students may be asked to determine what variables should go where in assembling a graph, and then use a simple program to create it. They could also be asked to research a topic on the Web and evaluate the authoritativeness of what they find.

Students “really do know how to use the technology,” said Dolores Gwaltney, a library media specialist at Thurston High School in Redford, Mich., one of the high school trial sites for the test over the next few weeks. “But they aren’t always careful in evaluating. They go to a source and accept it.”