National Standards Underway for Information and Communication Technology Literacy
The National Forum on Information Literacy announced that 16 influential education and business leaders have formed a policy council that will determine national standards for information and communication technology (ICT) literacy.
The announcement comes on the heels of the first Information Literacy Summit, which drew more than 100 attendees to Washington, D.C., on October 16, 2006. Summit panelists shared their perspectives on information literacy and its impact on the global society, workforce readiness, and public policy in the United States.
“Policy-makers, business leaders, and educators need to address the reality that America’s competitive advantage, continued economic growth, and status as a world leader depends on its ability to produce a highly skilled, information-literate workforce, which was the focus of the 2006 Information Literacy Summit,” says National Forum on Information Literacy Co-Chair Lana W. Jackman, convener of the new National ICT Literacy Policy Council and president of Mlange Information Services, Inc. “In today’s information society, the need for ICT literacy skills as a necessary foundation for K-16 academic success, workforce development and productivity, and lifelong learning is so evident that it is often overlooked.
“Meeting the complex range of skills likely to be required of our workforce presents a significant challenge, but it is a challenge we can no longer afford to ignore,” Jackman continues. “The Policy Council will recommend policy changes and create national standards for ICT literacy proficiency so that we can ensure that every student knows how to use technology to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and use information effectively in solving complex problems and issues.”
The National ICT Literacy Policy Council will provide leadership in creating national standards for ICT Literacy. Its members will review current ICT literacy and information literacy assessments and standards documents, determine the number of assessment levels, name those levels (such as advanced proficiency, acceptable proficiency, and minimal proficiency), and provide descriptions for each level. In short, the Council will determine what students should know and be able to achieve at each level.
The Council will also recruit subpanels to review the two versions of the ICT Literacy Assessment, an online, interactive test of students’ ICT literacy created by the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service. The subpanels, composed of educators familiar with the needs and abilities of students, will determine cut points for each of the performance levels, so that students who score above a cut point will be considered more ICT literate than students who score below that cut point. These cut points may help educators determine which students are proficient and which may need additional ICT literacy instruction or remediation. The Council will review the recommendations and modify and/or accept them as appropriate national ICT literacy standards.
The Council’s first meeting will convene in December.
For more information about the recent Information Literacy Summit, visit www.infolitsummit.com. For more information about the ETS-ICT Literacy Assessment, visit www.ets.org/ictliteracy.
Abstracted from Market Wire Newsletter, 10/24/06; Source: Educational Testing Service.