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?"

Comments

I haven't taken anything like this...

[ErichTheWebGuy]

... 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.

Re:I haven't taken anything like this...

[wtrmute]

The idea of this test is fundamentally flawed. If you are good at problem solving, you will be good at problem solving in a technology-rich environment or a technology-poor environment equally. Analytical thought and problem solving has been around a lot longer than computers, and the same people that are good at solving problems with computers were good at solving problems with other things before computers.

Funny, my grandpa is an electrical and civil engineer (class of '51), has managed some pretty large projects on his own, and served as a kind of guru to probably half the population of engineers in Rio de Janeiro in the 70's and 80's. However, he has only learned to use MS Word and Excel after extensive coaching, and even today will get stuck if something unexpected happens (like, say, a button disappears from the Excel toolbar). Computer literacy, and especially the UI concepts like what is a menu, toolbar, link, etc, what is drag-and-drop, and some most general notions of OO (in the form of plug-ins and OLE/COM/CORBA/Bonobo) go a long way in allowing people to understand how software usually works.

schools and computer literacy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's easier to test for incompetency

[WayneConrad]

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:

Write a loop that executes its body 10 times.

Or for electrical engineers:

What is the equation for Ohm's law?

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.