Sep
17
Written by:
Dan Maas
9/17/2009
While it seems so many of THE Journal's articles these days are really advertisements for the sponsors associated, I usually find the editorials enlightening. Particularly this one from this month's THE Journal about the planning for the NAEP Technology Literacy assessment. Editorial Director Geoffrey Fletcher warns of an impending train wreck as the NAEP is planning to merge three very large, and pretty disparite definitions of Technological Literacy for the planning of a national test due 2012. Curious, I went to the NAEP report available here: http://ow.ly/jYYg
Below, I've copied the frameworks of the standards for review. Many of these seem to suggest that every high school graduate should have a basic engineering background. I find this interesting and question whether this is taking something that is vitally important to have among our graduates and perhaps over-emphasizing it to be a general education skill? I certainly agree we need more and really good engineers... but should everyone be a pre-engineering student? Really??
I found some citizenship skills in this list, but while I was pleased to see copyrights included here, the standards completely miss the ideas of personal safety (i.e. cyber-bullying and fraud-avoidance), protecting one's identity (today, your identity IS currency) or ettiquette (ever been annoyed by someone texting during a meeting they should be contributing to? Or how about the whole "sexting" issue?). This framework turns a blind eye to these very important 21st Century issues as far as I can tell... OK, I may have missed it in the document...
I did see information literacy but very little in regards to one's mastery of communications. Productivity is well covered in the form of engineering (and I think over-emphasized) but I failed to see any publishing. Granted, they do have the concept of democratizing information, but I don't really see any mastery of web 2.0 concepts there... considering that President Barack Obama's successful campaign was powered in large part by web 2.0, this seems like a glaring hole. And of course, there's some of the science-related-to-technology issues like global warming and waste management that are included. I'm not sure, but I think these belong more in the science standards and perhaps we should let the scientists debate these issues. I'd leave them out when it comes to technological literacy.
How about this for a definition: Technology is the use of tools to change one's environment and pursue activities within it. Literacy is the myriad of skills humans use to share knowledge and to work together. Perhaps technology literacy is the ability to use tools to advance and use one's literacy. While I see every one of our graduates being faced with accessing vast quantities of information, needing to communicate with people around the world, having to publish materials online for various audiences and produce both knowledge and practical products for a career, and certainly understand how to protect one's identity to function in a globalized society... I don't know if I agree that every graduate will be faced with design and build challenges as a normal part of being a 21st Century citizen regardless of career and lifestyle. Maybe I'm wrong......
I have high hopes that NAEP's work is only formative for now, but we need some more commentary and discussion on this. So, take a look and have at it.
Summary of NAEP Technological Literacy Framework project