What IT Skills Should Teachers Expect of Incoming HS Freshmen?

At a recent district curriculum council meeting we discussed how we might be able to determine the level of technology proficiency of our incoming 9th graders. While we have a fairly good handle on what we teach all students grades K- 6 through our library media program, we still find a huge disparity among students as they enter high school. Much of the difference can be attributed to the varying levels of teacher enthusiasm for reinforcing skills in the classroom and, of course, levels of home access.

A paper and pencil test on ICT skills seems shallow. A full-blown performance assessment would be a huge time commitment. A self-assessment rubric would be unreliable.

There are the inklings of some online “performance tests.” ETS is designing one for college students. (You can look at a flash demo at <http://www.ets.org/Media/Products/ICT_Literacy/demo/index.html>. But I have seen little work done on how we accurately measure the skills of incoming high school students.

Here is my very modest proposal: we pick the top 5 “ICT skills” that classroom teachers should be able to expect of all students and design short, authentic “tasks” that can be easily assessed. If each core classroom teacher gives and evaluates one skill at the beginning of the freshman year, a profile of every student can be compiled and remediation can be provided through classes taught by the library media specialist.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been a classroom teacher, but I will start the conversation by suggesting that these tools and skills are essential for all students if they are to be able to do basic work assigned by classroom teachers.

1. Word processing
2. Spreadsheet use and graphing
3. Multimedia presentation software and digital image handling
4. E-mail use
5. Internet-enabled research

My list of skills and assessments. (Moved from single entries.)

I'll let you know what the curriculum committee thinks.  You are very welcome to suggest an alternative list of skills!

Oh, because of the magic of the Internet, I am happily being productive from home this morning, waiting for the Sears repairperson to come and determine why the water softener no longer seems to be removing rust from our water. Everyone and everything seems to be taking on a lovely orange hue lately. One definite advantage of working from home is looking over the lake instead of the parking lot at school…

Comments

[Diane]

I'd like to think outside the box for a moment, although I'm typing IN one. The skills that teenagers prize among each other in informal gatherings would include:
*audio software manipulation with maintenance of databases, importing & exporting in multiple formats, and voice IM's, conference calling, and captures.
*video and text presentation in a collaborative mode (blogs, wiki's, IM's gone wild).
*text manipulation from brainstorm products like Inspiration, to outlining, to writing/ editing/ collaboratively proofing to copying and pasting citations and finalizing printing on the cheapest printer available (the school library usually)
*communication software in real-time: IM's, myspace, blogs, cell phones, PDA's, ipods, PSP's, emails with attachments of all formats to cross-platforms.
*game playing online with audio capabilities to talk to newly created communities of players.

These are the skills that students call each other to ask "how-to's." When I end up with 8 teenage boys in the house, these are the activities they DO and they talk about.

Note: they don't come to the adults in the house and ask how to do new things. Fortunately the adults provide training and info on "new stuff" periodically that seems to fall on deaf ears, but which comes out of their "teen expert mouths" later on when their friends are over.

[Doug]

Hi Diane,

I certainly agree that the skills you list are ones that students (and one day hopefully teachers) value highly.

The purpose of developing this tool, however, is in determining "lowest-common-denominator" type skills expected by our high school teachers. Since I have not yet run my list by our curriculum council (all department chairs and curriculum director), I don't yet know if my very limited list is shooting too high or too low. It will be an interesting discussion.

Our district is somewhat, ahem, traditional in its teaching methodology. Partially, this may well be because we have historically done well as measured by state tests, etc. People often don't change when it seems past practices have worked well. Can't blame them. What I do remind our staff is that while we seem to do well by the majority of our kids as measured by limited indicators, we don't do well by every child and mostly likely under serve many, many more.

I appreciate your perspective and hope for higher expectations of my teachers in the future. And as I say, I may be underestimating them NOW.

All the best,

Doug

[Diane]

Can you imagine a day when a child demands a better educational system than one that teaches to the lowest common denominator? What about a working environment? I have high expectations for myself as a librarian. I have been told to lower my own expectations to the average level of the "comfortable where they are" crowd so I won't feel such stress. Yet, I choose activities that challenge myself to continually learn. I took one of those crazy tickle tests like "What kind of dog are you?" and it turned out I was a German Shepherd because I love to work. I do own a German Shepherd and we are very simpatico.

We have students who love to learn. I believe that there is a strong shift occurring nationally between the way students are learning outside of the classroom and the way the authorities in charge view education.

Soon students will not be satisfied with the notion of teachers instructing them to meet only bare minimal goals so they can achieve the lowest common denominator. One of the subversive services we can offer is to create awareness of other ways to learn outside of school. Let's cause some dissatisfaction.

I understand that for the purposes of your blog you are creating something very practical, but I am thinking through some deep gray matter. The teachers have the most difficulty lining up their students not when they are playing games, but when they are actively involved in learning. Today 3rd graders had to be pried away from studying matter in Grolier Online. Finally I turned out the lights and said, "I'm going to lunch and you have to leave." They didn't want to stop learning. Every time we have used the technology to enable them to control their learning, the students have gone above and beyond the teacher's expectations. When do we raise the bar?

Diane