Slashdot Mirror
IT Literacy Test
crumley writes "The Educational Testing Service just announced a new
test that is designed to measure information technology literacy. The test is supposed to measure the ability of students to use software to solve problems, and not just how to use particular programs. So has anyone out there taken a test like this? Did it seem to measure critical thinking and problem solving skills?"
one wonders how in two hours one can truly test someone's compentency when most projects requires at least 2hours to determine the source of the problem
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
Take the test but ya be warned: Failing even one question will result in a one year suspension of your Geek Licence.
They got the URL wrong - of course if you can't figure out how to fix it, you fail the literacy test. anyway it's a slash, not a backslash. (If you can't tell those apart, that's an automatic fail, too.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yet another way for the ETS to make money by gathering some useless statistics. Sigh...
Whoever designed Slashdot's IT colorscheme fails!
While this is a good measurement of progress for our current interface and will be useful to measure the average worker. I expect it to be hopelessly interface dependent. There is more than one good and useful GUI or TUI (is there another name for a text only UI?)
...it's pencil & paper based!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... but a test like this seems long overdue. I can't tell you how irritated I get when some new snotnose paper-MCSE comes strollin into my office thinking they know everything. If the test is accurate, fair, and relevant, I might consider it as part of the candidate screening process when hiring new IT workers.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Equipped with a PC in a proctored environment and pencil and paper for notes, students are challenged to respond to 16 tasks over the course of the two-hour online test.
The ETS created a test to see whether or not people deserve to live. To take the test, one has to fork over $5k and a kidney, but ETS says that this test is necessary, "For the continuation of our species"...who am I to question the ETS.....
Monstar L
I always thought spatial IQ tests checked one's capability for critical thinking.
a polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate change.
But of course, since the low-budget public schools can't afford the computer technology, they will have to lower the standards bar yet again to be fair. I hope you all remember how to use the Apple II.
-- Saturn SL1-WNY -- Propz: GNAA
When we were kids we had MAN this and MAN that. Now you whippersnappers have your fancy F1, and ICT literacy assessments. We didnt even have F keys and we had to flip switches both ways, in the snow!
Now get off my lawn j00 l33t whippersnappers!
and something about an onion on my belt
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Question 1:
File Edit View Favorites Tools Help.
What does this mean?
Question 2:
What is that little X thingy in the upper right hand panel?
If you can answer these questions correctly, you're technically competent. If not, you have a bright future as a technology patent examiner.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
.....basically from Microsoft stating that you must know the end result will be Microsoft and Microsoft Only. What is Linux will be on some of the answers but it is in responce to the question, Not an actual answer. The major question and answers will be as follows: You are trying to complete a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet. How would you complete this task? 1. Write it in when you print it. 2. Search Microsoft Technet. 3. What is Linux? 4. Download OpenOffice.org and get the comunity to help you. Other questions will be about the Start button and how to close windows. The Blue screen of Death will not be covered because it does not happen in real world applications. Just applications that are tested for Microsoft. ANd that is just about every Microsoft product in used in the real world today. Thank god for the Send To Microsoft option when an application crashes. How else would yound minds learn?
Capture animal for food and create fire to cook it.
Back in 1999, I was a chemical engineer looking for a change of pace. Purdue was desperate for computing folks, so they offered a program called Information Systems and Technology Eduction Program.
The entrance exam was a test that determined your ability to think logically and break down the wholes into their parts with appropriate linkages. It included block diagram puzzles and other assorted logic statements and questions. Not a single line of code anywhere in it (that would have defeated the purpose). I took the test, did well, and was hired.
So, these things have been around for quite a while, at least since 1999.
I was going to respond to a comment by someone else, but nothing previously posted merited a response of any sort (with the possible exception of the bitter guy who seems to hate ETS).
Personally, from a psychometrics point of view, which is something I have a more than passing interest in, ETS is incredible. They have data sets that are invaluable, and have done a lot to further the field of testing. Yes, they do make a lot of money, but I can say that they also earn that money.
If you think otherwise, consider it this way--for every test that they publish there are literally thousands of hours of research, testing, and retesting that have been done. Those doing this work need to be paid, and they typically demand fairly generous salaries (IRT analysts aren't that common, and certainly earn their pay).
Now, that said--wait a few years before you spend a ton of money on this one. That time is critical in making absolutely certain that the test really predicts success or ability. In a few years, we'll know.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Yeah ok whatever... IT today is tomorrows trash. There is no test for an industry that moves this fast. You either get it or you don't What's next? A hacker test? How are you going to test that? The person that steals the answers first from the school files gets the highest grade?
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Many are familiar with the often frustratingly cryptic interview questions from Microsoft and others... my favorite (which I would certainly use if I were running a support department):
"You come home and flip the switch, but the lights don't come on. Describe in as much detail as you can how you would go about fixing the problem."
Most people I've asked respond with "replace the light bulb." While that might be the problem, I think the first thing you should do is try the switch again. Maybe you didn't flip the switch all the way, or you hit the wrong one.
The point is that it's a problem solving experience - and not just in technology. It doesn't require expertise in Microsoft Word. It doesn't take a techie to know this stuff. You can measure a person's aptitude for logic, problem-solving, etc. without ever testing specific examples of those skills. That's what I really like about that question. Hopefully, the ETS exam will take this perspective when developing such tests.
What a useless thing to test. If you think logically and can break problems down, anything in operating computers simply comes down to Googling, reading, and thinking logically. This is about as useless as just a plain old IQ test, SAT, or any other standardized "bubble" test in assessing future work/educational performance. In fact, I bet an IQ test would be just as effective in this situation. My guess is that it is simply knowledge based, not action based (wasn't willing to drudge through ETS's corporate "Yeah us!" language). ETS should take a hint from Cisco. Their tests are difficult and actually ("GASP!") test performance in real world situations in solving real world examples and problems using real Cisco gear.
Can't find any on the site. Anyone have suggestions?
I'm the network admin for a school. I've been doing this for seven years and have been teaching computer classes for five. I teach the 7th grade how to do simple programming in LOGO. They learn the concepts of loops, variables, functions, etc. They learn how to take a problem, break it into parts and come up with a program to solve the problem. They also learn a bit of computer history and how to count and do simple math in binary. I believe I'm the only one doing this in my area.
I deal with a number of people in my position in other schools. Without fail, the computer "literacy" classes in those schools is training in Microsoft Office. They're just training kids to use a particular version of a particular product from ONE company. They're not teaching them the concepts behind a modern word processor, they're training them how to click buttons in Word.
When I started this job, I thought education was all about teaching people how to think and solve problems. I was wrong!
I'm fortunate at this job in that I'm pretty much free to use whatever solutions get the job done. 80% of the machines here are Linux based terminals (using LTSP). I'm also fortunate that I won the old teaching concepts vs. training argument with the administration. I'm free to teach the computer literacy class however I wish.
Q: You're browsing your favorite site full of neat little applications that will tell you the weather, customize your windows, and even let you download music for free when a pop up box tells you that your computer may be infected with DANGEROUS SPYWARE... You should...
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
To answer your question....I took ETS's CS Subject AGRE 4 years back after completing my Bachelors....and found it pretty interesting.
The exam webpage (no time to dig it up) lists a few CS categories that they'll test on, and happily, these include all the core areas of CS. From memory, the list goes roughly as follows:
Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Algorithms
Languages and Compilers
Computer Architecture
Logic
Databases
All questions were multiple choice like the regular GRE test (the pattern has changed since), but I liked the fact that they focussed on the "core" CS subjects, which every Bachelor's CS course should cover.
New buzzwords like "IT" frighten me....hope they continue to adhere to fundamental knowledge than buzzwordish software/peripheral areas.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
My carefully cultivated bullshitting skills... now rendered useless!!!
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
At least I've always been told that.
Yes sir, I too find the racial stereotyping here at Slashdot to be much out of line! Asians and Indians are software engineers just as talented as the White Man!
Sanjeep Arahuapu
After RTFA it would seem that is simply another version of your standard can you use product X. I may have missed it, but where do they actually test anything other than your ability to communicate using technology?
I'm pretty sure that most "postsecondary students" are up to par on communicating with technology. I'm more concerned with the degredation that has resulted from "postsecondary students" using IM and SMS technology to communicate.
Perhaps it can serve as a model for a test.
sigs, as if you care.
There your skills are in demand.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
I took that test in HS and scored #1 in my school, somehow beating this brilliant Yugoslavian classmate (who was clearly far smarter a guy than me and did graduate and go to Waterloo) by exactly 1 point. (Marko, if you're reading this, I still think you're really smart.) The questions were actually pretty intelligent, though honestly my programming skills were pretty lame back then and I only answered two out of the five questions before the three hours expired.
...we took a final like this. We sat in front of our workstations. We were given a text file with an assembly program that opened a printer and printed a simple message. The code had a series of errors that aborted assembly and several errors (mainly playing with address indirection) that assembled fine, but failed to produce the correct output on the correct device of the printer. I managed to get the program to assemble, AND fixed the print output. Man, were my fellow students PISSED when my printer started chattering. Teacher said he'd have a harder test next year.
I'm the network admin for a school. I've been doing this for seven years and have been teaching computer classes for five. I teach the 7th grade how to do simple programming in LOGO
People are still teaching LOGO? Holy 1982 Batman! Do they use a mouse to move the turtle nowadays?
...for people buying a computer. I can't tell you how many times I have had some one call me at work.... "This game doesn't work and my computer is brand new." "Sir, you have a 2mb video card and video drivers from 1999, the computer is not new." "Yeah it is I just bought it off my neighbor and they said it was new...." They need to make this a standard for people buying a computer because some people are DUMB!!!!!!
the test will all be Microsoft product specific.
Someone on Slashdot demands an example test be made available online so they can take it and brag about how competent they are, thus prompting several other members to take the test to see who is the most perfect and has the largest e-penis.
-- Any comments seen here are not mine, but a mixture of alchohol and lack of sleep.
Part of the problem with computing these days is the lack of basic education that the users have about computing in general. There are many people that believe that the CD-ROM drive is a cup holder, that Microsoft is everything (how many users have you seen say that "Microsoft isn't working?" Incredible), don't know anything about the dangers of the Internet and properly securing their computers (i.e., installing a firewall, protecting themselves from viruses and malware by using anti-virus and anti-malware tools, and using Firefox or an alternative to Internet Exploder), don't know about files and folders, or other basic movements with a computer, and faint at the sight of having to learn anything that is more complicated than moving a mouse around and clicking an icon (command lines are a great example). I would love to see a required high-school or college test that tests on all of the basic computing ideas and tasks, plus a little more. Unfortunately, many high schools and colleges have already implemented MS-centric "computer competency" requirements that test on nothing more than how to use MS Office and Windows; they test on specific applications, not about how to use computers per sé.
Am I saying that all of these people need to be tested on writing shell scripts, C programming, configuring ipfw/iptables, and compiling a kernel? Of course not! I'm just saying that I believe that all people using a computer need to be eduacted about the responsibilities and risks of having a computer, and all of the things needed to do in order to protect yourself. We all have to take driver's education and driver's training before we even step foot into a car, because we know the responsibilities and dangers of riding a car. When we get our cars, we have to learn how to maintain it, too. So, how come most users expect that their computers are magical boxes that don't need to be maintained or taken care of? The computer is a powerful multipurpose tool that can be beneficial when used correctly, but can also be a weapon (or zombie) if used incorrectly.
.
Did it seem to measure critical thinking and problem solving skills?"
Apparently, these have already been tested elsewhere.
The answer shocked a few people
.is to download pr0n without the proctor noticing and to destroy all evidence on the computer before the test is finished.
YOU FAILED IT.
It's hard to know much about this test until we see it. Tests in general are measurements based on a body of knowledge. Maybe it's good, maybe it's not. Damning tests because they seem unfair is silly. Measurements are referential. Some have bad reference points and therefore can't measure very well. Some can, some tests age and become useless, some are good in specific areas. Without the knowledge of the test questions and the criteria for them, comments will likely be specious.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"Yes, they do make a lot of money, but I can say that they also earn that money.
If you think otherwise, consider it this way--for every test that they publish there are literally thousands of hours of research, testing, and retesting that have been done."
No matter how much time, research, testing, and retesting I put into my latest creation on the toilet, I don't think anyone will be interested in buying it.
You can take it here. Free reg required.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
You could call it "computing", and refer to everything else as a "video game".
But you know what the best practices are (or were at the time they became codified in a test). If you are mindful of what the standard way is, you can at least choose it when there is no reason not to do it that way.
Also, when the time comes to make product recommendations, you can say (for example), "Well, the industry standard is that your offline backup solution media should have at least the capacity as your online storage." (I made that up.)
People like to follow standards, but in this case if they chose a cheapo backup solution you'd have made them decide to go against the standard to do it. Never underestimate the value of C'ing Your A.
That's not exactly what I wanted to say, but you can take it from there.
sigs, as if you care.
th4t t3h t35t w45 c|-|3cki|\|6 uR 5k|llz @ r34|]1n6 |33t
Of course this test is not multiple-choice. They ask you to actually do something with software. On the surface, at least, this test looks like an attempt to come up with what's known as "authentic assessment." One of the biggest criticisms with multiple-choice exams is that they don't directly measure the skills that we really want to test. And many critics of standardized testing find the find the correlation between multiple-choice questions and real skills to be weak indeed.
... to say [...]information technology literacy. The test is supposed to measure the ability of students to use software to solve[...]
:P The idea is I could gather some questions for undergrad IT students which all would come from the field of information technology problems and it would show IT literacy without ever needing any software to test their whatever skills on.
Probably it's just the little IT engineer devil from inside me, but determining IT literacy by measuring ability to use sw... wow, this really has to be the 21st century
Most certainly I know that practice counts as much (or more) as theory in such tests, but practice doesn't just and always mean the ability to use some sw.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
...is the name of a fine book, probably out of print by now, that exposed many of the fallacies behind tests that purport to measure aptitude rather than raw knowledge.
I remember one wonderful example from the book that gave 4 reading comprehension questions from a recent SAT. I got all 4 correct - it was easy. The kicker is that the book leaves out the excerpt that the test-takers were supposed to read and comprehend. The test wasn't measuring reading comprehension nearly so much as it was measuring test-takers' abilities to "smell" the phrasing of an obviously wrong answer.
To succeed in today's - and tomorrow's - classroom, workplace, home, or technology-rich community, students need to know how to efficiently find, use, manage, and evaluate information resources so that they can create and effectively convey information and ideas to others. That is what the Higher Education ICT Initiative is all about: ensuring that individuals are proficient in ICT competencies so that they can improve their learning, their work, their lives, and their world.
Yeech. "Create and effectively convey"??? Sounds like Powerpoint.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
No test of student skills would be complete without testing the ability to obfuscate sources.
"Equipped with a PC in a proctored environment and pencil and paper for notes, students are challenged to respond to 16 tasks over the course of the two-hour online test".yep with my kde desktop pager open with sixteen desktops running it would be easy to accomplish 16 tasks at once. oops ther are using xp.
I'll wait till the Transcender's come out for it before I attempt it... Is there a Boot Camp training being offered for it yet?
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Our society has gotten far to hung up on testing as a silver bullet. Tests are just attempts to measure something, exactly as a ruler measures length or a scale measures weight. But tests such as the one in the article are, due to their nature, far less accurate or precise.
I see the introduction of yet another test as a poor substitute for one on one personal interviewing of the test subject. They are looking for a quick fix, one that is not people intensive when the fact is, people are best able to evaluate these complex abilities and skills, so long as they take sufficient time in doing so.
This is just like "No Child Left Behind". Instead of investing in the people, in that case teachers to work with students, a battery of standardized tests are introduced as a substitute. Yet, there is no validation of the testing against its objective, while we entrust our decisions to those very tests.
That is the biggest issue here as well. We are attempting to replace human judgement with supposedly objective testing, when it is precisely the complexity of that human judgement that is called for.
I think this is a step in the right direction. You see as someone who is working for a Masters in C.E I feel I at a slight disadvantage. Other engineering disciplines have the P.E. Exam to test your knowledge. The P.E. exam is not really right for computer people; it has far to broad of a subject matter. I welcome this path and hope that it leads to a P.E. type of exam for computer scientists.
Yeah, they have an IST program at Penn State Univerity as well, but honestly no one has respect for the IST majors. I'm not sure if its the same at Perdue, but IST majors are said to have a degree in Microsoft Office, MS Access and SQL. Their fortes are Power Point and Visio. They are primped for making pretty charts and not really understanding the concepts behind what they are making charts for. Im still a student, and havent seen this graduates in action, but judging by the ones I've met, I would be supprised if they are anything more than just the slightest bit usefull.
- Paper tigers don't impress me.
It should be "(Apple) Finder File Edit View Go Window Help"
And it's a red aqua gumpdropeseque blob of translucent fluid you ignoramus.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
If I say I licked that test, and it was the Command Line Interface Test, do I get in trouble?
Reality is all that stuff that doesn't care if you believe in it or not.--Solomon Short
If you had taken/seen the computer-based GRE, you would know ETS went out of its way to make a platform-independent test environment. The word processor, for example, had some functions common to MS Word, but not all of them were. It did not superficially resemble Word, Emacs, or any other text editor I'm familiar with.
Live free or die
But if you try to say that to people who really believe in standardized tests, you'll get ridiculed and called all sorts of names. All it took was about 50 years of it being the norm and it automatically becomes something unquestioned by society.
I'm a programmer, and want to know: What is IT ?
It's easier to test for incompetency than for competency.
A company I worked for got so many liars applying for jobs that we made these rediculous little tests to give people. Here's a sample question from our C test:
Or for electrical engineers:
I thought these tests were a waste of time. I think I said something like, "If someone is breathing they'll pass it." Then I saw how many people who claimed "expert" on their resume failed the liar's test. Weeding out the liars left us with a much smaller pool of candidates.
Moderation -1
100% Overrated
WTF is this? How can it be overrates if no one modded it up? Retards...
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Huh? how is logo good for BASIC? A couple of years ago Starlogo was being developed to model complex group behaviors (such as swarming, birds flocking, fish schools) at Tufts University (with some help from MIT) Compare StarLogo to Visual Basic or any other current "basic." Maybe you're making a joke by quoting early childhood education texts from 20 years ago. You are joking, aren't you?
Yeah, my team at work manages firewalls, VPNs, and routers. We work mainly in the world of AIX, Nokia IPSO, PIX, and (sadly) Windows where we have to. Our Check Point GUI runs on Windows.
My team leads attempted to administer a "test" to our team, something we could use to objectively measure our skills. We had tried the subjective skills measurement questionairre. One of our smartest guys responded to "How familiar are you with TCPIP?" with a 3 out of 5. He owns TCPIP Illustrated, etc. This dumb girl on our team answered 5 out of 5 -- and she usually has to ask which switch you use with ping to make it run continually!
So we administered the test. All the dumb people rose up like abortion rights activists at the RNC -- they were outraged! How dare we throw out these crazy questions like what is ReiserFS and what is cron???
The tests are usually dumbed down to suit the results management wants. This "exam" is no exception.
The equation speaks for itself. I love the current theory that having a certification or the ability to rattle off words or phrases or specs makes you "smart".
The "smartest" people I have had the pleasure to work with are thoses that are open to other ideas and actually DON'T claim to know everything. They do know how to find solutions and in most cases the solutions were somebody else's.
The "know-it-alls" either ended up in the corner or on the street. Yes, they will always be able to find another job, but cycle continues. Plus, team skills are more important than individual skills. Know your role.
My instructor spent the first 30 minutes of class writing an intricate assembler program on the board.
When she finished, she asked for a volunteer to "fix the bugs"... Nobody jumped up, so I went for it.
I modifed the data section, rather than the actual code section, only took about a minute really, then it worked flawlessly.
She was a bit ticked that she spent so long writing the code on the board, since it was supposed to take the remainder of the class to debug it.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
when I was job searching dammit if almost everyone didn't ask me for A+ certification even though I'm a better tech than anyone I've met who is A+ certified.
Granted, maybe if they would let me walk in the door, I'd meet some smart people. And I'm not discounting A+ certified people. I just don't think it matters all that much which IRQ is the RTC (8).
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I am continually amazed by the number of my fellow college students who can barely read. It has made me extremely cynical about college because a solid 2/3 of college students in all but the most selective schools are both cheating and/or functionally illiterate. I wish I was exaggerating but I am not.
This is what is making me want to jump ship and get a job instead because If I have one more group project where my group consists of people who are just in college because they are supposed to be I am going to just say fuck it and start a business which is probably what I should have done.
If 4 years of college costs about 100k on the average (including living expenses) then I think I would be a lot better off if I had just been handed 100k at 18 for a business or a property investment.
With all the bootcamps and such it doesn't take much knowhow to pass. Although there will most likely be a bootcamp for this test soon enough!
-- "Life's not fair, but the root password helps."
People I know who score higher on ETS tests tend to be smarter than people I know who score lower on ETS tests.
Or they cheat better.
Or they have money to spend on preparation classes.
Or they're white.
Either way, the ETS tests can very actively tell admissions counselors which students are the the wealthiest white cheaters who are not totally stupid.
paintball
I had to take a computer literacy test for college, it was on online test that consisted of three parts.
The first part was to see if you could use the Windows XP help system (I had never used it, even when I did use Windows), and other general windows tasks. The fact that there are multiple ways to do something in Windows XP, and only their way is right combined with myself using Linux as my main OS for the past 5 months made this part very irritating.
The second part was to see if you knew how to use Internet Explorer. It got me to type in an address, but _required_ that I include http:// , even though IE will include it for me.
The third part tested to see if I knew how to use MS Word. Things like make this text bold...
The whole experience was in my opinion a complete waste of time. If you are taking a computer related course, and don't know how to do simple things you deserve to fail.
Is this conclusive evidence that women are in fact smarter than men?
No, It's "conclusive evidence" that "the majority of men who voted chose Bush, but the majority of women who voted chose Kerry."
Nothing more, nothing less...
Required reading for internet skeptics
From TFA:
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Is that Slashdot or Backslashdot?
That would be "Whackdot".
For the subversive: sorry, it's already registered...
the computer "literacy" classes in those schools is training in Microsoft Office. [...] They're not teaching them the concepts behind a modern word processor, they're training them how to click buttons in Word.
The problem is that there is no modern word processor which could be used to teach the concepts that should be behind them. Never was any concept behind Word, other than "add the most features you can to this typewriter".
The modern ones aren't word processors. The word processors aren't modern. All we have is monstruous Word and would-be clones.
Still waiting for the simple and real word processor. I wish it would use plain HTML and CSS, but in an interface designed for people having something to say in a structured way, not for graphics designers turned web-designers, or for computer geeks.
your report card says
YOU FAIL IT.
hahah, you have to mod this up, its funny!!!1
I completely know what you mean. When I was looking for a job, if you did not have some Java cert, then forget about it. It is very frusterating.
It seems like the test or the cert gets in the door (may even gets you the job), but it does not equate to the best person for the job.
It is just unfortunate that throwing a test at something is supposed to measure a person's qualification. It simply measures how good a person can take a test. There is just too much emphasis on test taking skills.
Yes, often individuals who are quite knowledgable also know what they **don't** know. Years ago when I worked at a computer company we had a simple screening test to try and reduce the time spent on truly hopeless candidates. It seems as though that a lot of people take courses, but don't learn enough to be useful from their classes. For electronics knowledge, a simple test was to have them remove an integrated circuit package from a double sided board - a bunch of tools that may or may not be useful for that task were provided. Individuals that passed the test and could also get the IC out were typically interviewed.
==
Are you really saying that computer literacy is defined as the ability to click a link? Really, really?
If that is so, maybe there's hope yet for this world.
The Educational Testing Service just announced a new test that is designed to measure information technology literacy.
You know, that concept sounds a whole lot like the "European Computer Driving Test" that all the kids here are taking these days.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Nautilus gives me a side pain by default :)
It seems that ets is the people making the test and they are the same ones making the sat. I hate that test. Never going to thake this test just because thost bastards made it
Many years ago I sat the entrance exam for RMIT Interior Design (no - not Decoration (what colour wallpaper), design (acoutstics, structural, thermal, lighting, etc...)).
The entrance exam was about 4 hours long, it included questions on spatial relationships, being able to visualise 3D objects from their 2D components, and lateral thinking (e.g. name 30 distinctly different uses for a brick, and again for a wine bottle).
I got an offer, but chose to do Architecture at UniMelb becuase it looked like less work. :)
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
About 2 years ago I was a High School Student, and students were required to take a computer class or take the computer literacy test. The test wasn't just extremely simple (at least for me) but it was also a "take home" test....
I remember seeing a few students helping each other with the test at lunch time. In all reality, the test was a joke, from the test itself, and how it was taken.
Do not expect this new test to be complex, when they say problems they probably mean, the computer isn't turning on, so check the power cable.... but yet even that is beyond some people. - And yes that is true, my mom teaches computers at the high school, and many have the problem.
(for those not familiar with Debian only): here's a bunch of Debian Woody CDs, a Unix manual and an old PC connected to a LAN.
If you get them to install and get to a tty and login that's 1 point.
If you get the network up, that's another point.
If you get all the peripherals going, that's another.
If you get XWindows up, that's another.
If you get KDE to fucking work you're a genius and that's the other 6 out of 10.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1 84201
I started programming when I was seven and had worked my way up to developing databases and other somewhat sophisticated programs by the time I was 12. When I went to junior high in eight grade, I had to take a computer course. They made us use LOGO. After a few assignments, it became obvious to me that I was never going to do well in the course, because the teacher's main interest was in the sophistication of the artwork, not the programming itself. Since I wasn't good at drawing, I was doomed to getting B's in the computer science program, since they wouldn't move on to real programming (like what I was doing at age 10) until 11th grade. And thus I went on to focus on arts and humanities courses during high school...and to major in English at university. The sad thing was that, when I was 11, a teacher had assessed my programming ability at equivalent to 11th grade. But nobody skipped grades in computer science back then, especially not a girl. :)
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Your library doesn't have SAT prep books either? Damn those asians and their asian parents who want their children to do nothing but study.. :D
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.