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Would You Pass the Information Literacy Test?
Grundelfeldsten writes "The Educational Testing Service -- the maker of the SAT and the GMAT -- has a new test called the Information and Communication literacy assessment. The test is designed to measure your "ability to make sense of the multiple streams of information that our computers throw at us every day," according to a Wired News reporter who just took it and described the process. The questions focus on completing tasks with Internet technologies, like using search engines efficiently and weeding out irrelevant email messages. Are such tasks really tied to technology? Or is "Information and Communication literacy" just a way for ETS to make money by selling more tests?"
The ETS people at least understand one thing many employers don't: the important computer skills are independent of the various tools used to carry them out. We've all heard (or experienced) horror stories of applicants being turned down for a web developer position because they don't have experience with a specific piece of software (Dreamweaver, for example). Many employers can't grok the fact that someone who knows how to code pages in a text editor will learn Dreamweaver or whatever in-house application is being used in 10 or 15 minutes. Someone who is competent at database admin will be equally competent with MySQL, dBase, or - the most common case - the customized proprietary software that only exists at your company. It's time employers stopped looking at paper certs for competency with specific pieces of software and started looking at actual skills. Maybe ETS can help them do that.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
I think it's a little more complicated than that. If you look at the task of, for example, checking email and finding spam, you have two options. Either you test whether someone knows what buttons in Outlook to click on, or you show them a client they're never seen before and ask them to figure it out. Testing a user on Outlook is tying the problem to the technology. Testing the user on a new email client is looking for pattern recognition, problem solving, and general logic applied to IT skills.
In my opinion, to be "IT literate" you should be able to transfer skills between applications. Thats what the test ought to be looking for..
http://twitter.com/onion2k
is "Information and Communication literacy" just a way for ETS to make money by selling more tests?
... unethical? Capitalistic? Smart? One of those, I'm sure ...
Gosh, no, is that the impression you got? Jesus. When a private corporation expands its offerings in order to generate sales, they're always doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Why, if it had anything to do with making money it'd be
Companies have a right to make money. That's why they're there.
I think you misspelled 'advertisements'
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I find it amazing that people always want to find a way to mathatize (I know mathatize is probably not a word) everything. Lets create a test so we can put people in pigeon holes and see who is better then the other. Person A got 25 more IT vocabulary words right then person B, I guess Person A is better then computers then person B. except for the fact that Person B has been doing computer programming for 40 years and created (and forgot) many of those IT vocabulary Words. When will people realize that people are not something that can be graded on 1 demential grading scale, and things like common sense, experience, creativity, determination, or bravery (willing to break it apart and tinker with it). Can often compensate any failure in just knowing the information. Yea these methods are a little slower then just having the answer at the tip of finger to fill out the question, but in real life it works just as well.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Another thing they try to teach you in school is not to cheat. But in the real world if some employee of mine is sitting at his desk trying to figure something out for more than 20 minutes without asking someone knowledgable in the subject, I fire them.
In the real world, it's okay to ask questions and ask for help.
This isn't about teamwork which is also important, it's about getting your work done quickly so that we can make money. We don't make money if you're afraid to ask questions.
My Evil Stepmother once told me that she wanted to go to community college to learn how to "do computer".
She would never pass a test like this. She thinks that AOL is the internet. She also thinks that it is great that there is lots of free (as in spyware, not beer or speech) software out there like gator and comet cursor.
I think that she is an excellent example of a real, average computer user.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords
I don't think that being able to filter out signal from noise on the internet has very much to do with technological know-how. The technology involved is either transparent (if you're a competent computer user) or an obstacle in carrying out the decisions you've made (if you're not a competent computer user).
Whether you are capable of making the right decisions about what information to accept or reject is almost entirely an issue of language skills and reading comprehension.
The people who continue posting their sob-stories as comments to some random guy's blog entry because they're convinced that the blog entry is Maury Povich's homepage aren't doing it because they're confused by Teh Intarweb (although it is a secondary factor); they're doing it because they can't read.
The guy thinking "Why, yes, I would like a penis enlargement; let me send you my credit card number!" would probably be falling for a snail-mail snake-oil scam right now if it weren't for the internet.
People who don't have good language skills are usually oblivious to the mistakes made by others, and thus often can't tell the difference between a genuine official document and something which is obviously not an official document because it is full of spelling and grammar mistakes and makes no sense.
I admit that a familiarity with the types of information sources available on the internet, their usual form, and their relative usefulness and reliablility, is helpful. For example, someone new on the internet may be unaware that nobody ever sends official warnings of danger to random people over email - and so they may be fooled by a well-written email hoax which more knowledgeable people would immediately mark as BS.I choose "It's just a way to make money selling tests" Testing Internet skills in children today is like testing television skills in the children of the 80's.
DON'T PANIC
I don't know if this test in particular is a valid solution for it, but I've suggested that the art-and-design college where I work use something like this to change the handling of computers in their curriculum. Currently they assume incoming students know nothing and put an Intro to Computers class on their first-year class list. And a lot of them need it. But the ones who show up the first day of class with a scuffed-up PowerBook loaded with Lightwave, Final Cut, Macromedia Studio, and Adobe Creative Suite would be better off skipping the (IMHO) remedial education (a waste of their time, money, and enthusiasm) and go right into a studio class that teaches them what to do with Photoshop, not how to use it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
i think you're getting confused. Companies have a duty to make money (that's what they're for). They even have rights pursuant to activities surrounding the making of money. They do not have the right to make money, otherwise they could sit and do nothing and then demand taxpayer cash from the government because their rights were being infringed.
Nobody has the right to make money.
Judging from my experience, it's a mixture of curiosity (enjoying tinkering) and courage (not being afraid to try out things). And most of the time, what those who don't get along well with computers etc. and don't pick up any knowledge even after using them for years are missing is courage - people who never do anything they don't already know about will never learn anything new.
Of course, I can understand that people value their data and don't want to lose any of it, but it seems that the less knowledge people have with regard to computers, the more outright paranoid they get.
It's kind of a vicious circle really (ignorance produces fear, and fear prevents tinkering and thus - indirectly - knowledge), and I'm not sure how to break out of it. The idea that software has to be "dumbed down" until even the most clueless person can use it without ever having to check the manual/online help/whatever seems good at first glance, but it also limits what you can and cannot do, and gives you the impression that you in fact DO know everything there is to know when you don't, thus robbing you of the ability (or at least making it more difficult) to learn more.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Although the 6"x5" Flash window means the type displays at about friggin' 5 point. Cute layout. Virtually unreadable demo with 17" at 1152x864. A pet peeve I have with web designers.
Seems like a valid office worker test to me. And, obviously more important, a money-making need to promote that they can fill.
but I immediately thought of this as an HR test for potential office workers instead of an academic competency test. I suppose it could be a shiny new toy at Student Services in their "How to Study" program but still seems secondary to a lot of other essential academic abilities.
I am an IT Guru
No, you're maintenance personnel.
Mostly true.
However, as someone who knows 12 programming languages and takes about four hours to learn a new one, let me just tell you that I spent the last week learning a language tied to a proprietary product.
It's totally different; it has its own features that nothing else does, and there are about 10 different manuals describing it.
I might also add that while the SQL specification can be written on two 8.5x11 sheets, the manual for Oracle is a 600 page book. Obviously it has a little more functionality than just any old database engine.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Gurus don't sit on their ass monitoring systems. Wake up dude, you're maintenance. You're the janitor of the IT industry.
Gurus get calls like this late Saturday afternoon, "Where are you Monday morning? Nevermind. We need you in Chicago at 8AM."
Has anyone here been to a University in the past several years? Everything from Art to Business to IT Programs at Univs now have their own "Intro to Computing" classes that they force just about everyone to take because they're under the assumption that most students haven't used a computer before.
Now, I'm not talking classes about how to build web pages, or how to effectively utilize Google, I'm talking about "Ok, now class... this is a... mouse!" and there aren't ways currently to profeciency test out of them. I had to sit through my intro to computing class because attendance was required, and while I was there I kept myself busy tinkering with my linux server in my dorm room. The professor caught me once and asked what I was doing... I answered and they had NO clue what I was saying. I wonder who needs an intro class more.
A test like this, while ridiculous to those of us used to technology, is needed right now at the College level. They don't believe that students come to college now with basic computer skills, and the only thing that will convince them are test scores that prove this point. In the immediate future, at least these tests could allow those of us who know where the power switch is to skip those sorts of classes that are just a waste of our time.
EXACTLY!
I don't know how many times I've been working with someone, and they're perfectly proficient in Word, Excel, and all the other crap that came with their computer. But when they want me to explain a new feature, and I say "Pick BAR from the FOO menu and select QUUX from the BAZ list" or something like that, they have no idea what to do and want me to point at things to click.
It's like being computer-fluent instead of computer-proficient. I can be a little proficient at Spanish, and have conversations about relatively tame topics, but if I'm fluent I can pick up pretty easily on other topics as well. It's the same with computers: many people have a very limited "vocabulary" of skills, but they can't extend it to other applications or situations.
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Too bad the moderators have modded the parent down as off-topic.
They were not able to read but could see that all was bold, thus thought it was a GNAA troll or such.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I was working in a COBOL shop in the late 1970s (I was young, I needed the money) and management decided it would subject all serious job candidates for the IT department of this little manufacturing company to a "programmer's aptitude test". But, before they did that, they wanted a baseline from the existing employees. I took the test.
I did well very well against the "average" of those who had taken the test (supposedly). But, what does this prove? Most of these kinds of tests look for the mechanical "put this here, put that there" process-of-elimination kinds of activities. The real challenge in using a computer as a tool is understanding how to generalize and extrapolate, skills I've never seen these tests assess.
We now have a generation of people who know how to do some things but have not learned why they system works--an insight that would make them an order of magnitude more effective with these tools.
The how vs. why wasn't explored in those tests from 25 years ago; I've not seen any evidence that tests of today explore it either.
-- Scott
This problem is very easy to fix. Let's do what was done in the former USSR in order to make sure that only the ones who can go on to get more education when it comes to public schools. I went to one of the best schools in the United States (according to Newsweek) and I was astonished by a number of people who clearly did not belong there. I can only imagine what happens in the rest of the public schools that are ranked lower than mine.
It works like this. Everybody is evaluated in terms of academic performance after then 10th grade. Anybody with a GPA of 3.0 and higher can move on further. People who have GPAs of 2.6-3.0 can move on after a consulation with councelors and only if their GPA is going to improve from there. Students who have a GPA of lower than 2.6 must find education somewhere else (vocational schools, private schools, etc.). Why should we waste our taxmoney on people who are not willing to study to begin with? In my case, 60% of people who attended the 9th grade did not come back to the 10th. That was pretty kick ass, considering the fact that everybody who made it actually wanted to study and move on. Classes were better, people were better and teachers had more room to breathe. Some of them finally started teaching instead of policing the ones who caused problems.
When I came to the United States, I was surprised to find out that this education system was willing to keep everybody regardless of their academic performance and behavior. In order to get expelled you had to some something quite outrageous that even most troublemakers did not attempt to do on a daily basis. This system is basically designed to have as many suckers as possibe. WTF? I believe this is the core of the problem. However, I do not have a Ph.D in Education; therefore, the final word is not mine.
Anyway, after you 'take care' of students who underperform and caused troubles, make sure that people who graduate from high schools meet certain requirements and make Information Studies as a part of the deal. Some bright kids do not have computers at home and it is hard for them to learn about something they do not have. Make sure that there is a class that these folks can take in order to broaden their knowledge. Then add a programming course or two because in the future everybody will need to be able to do something like that. I can't tell you how many biology and geography students I've met who were not prepared to take even simple programming classes in college (part of their requirements in order to do some sort of studies). In Belarus we had a course on simple algorithms where students had to write simple programs using BASIC. Mind you, this was in a country where majority of households do not have computers! We had only one class with 20 computers where kids had to share machines. I am sure that in the States we can come up with a better alternative. Once you make classes smaller by, weeding out the ones who do not want to study anyway, our schools can spend more money per student.
The purpose of the University is not to make one smarter but to prepare one for a career.
Sucking, clawing, lying and cheating are very important skills to have in a corporate environment.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
I e-Mailed the people and told them this, and told them they shouldn't claim to be giving tests on information literacy, if they don't know how to develop a professional website.
For professional websites, you should use as much static html as possible. Flash should mostly be used for entertainment, especially the type of entertainment that appeals to stoned kids at 3 AM.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
"But I probably did get docked for forgetting to send an attachment with the e-mail as required by the test question."
Haven't the ETS people learned yet? Sending an unsolicited attachment with your E-mail message is the best way of ensuring that said message hits the bit-bucket unread. (At least, if your recipient has enough brains to hit the floor with their hat...)
The reporter passed the test. ETS flunks.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
You know, I really think that a large portion of the population only does "process-oriented" learning vs "object-oriented" learning.
Many many people think I am incredibly smart (though unable to spell worth a damn) because I can set the clocks on most appliances and cars. You know why? (well, you probably do) Because as far as I can tell, there are only 3 major methods for doing so.
There's the one where you press a "set" button, and then look for 2 buttons close to each other that could be hours and minutes.
Or, there's the one that you press a set button, and then hold in the other button that goes up by minutes slowly to say 5, then starts counting by 5's, then at 30 by 30's etc...
Or there's the one where you just hit the hour button and then the minute button.
This is a simple example, but I mean, all GM cars since at least 1989 use the SAME radio/clock interface. Yet most of my family has to be taught again how the cruise control works, how to reset the clock etc... when they get a new car.
I harp on and on about concepts rather than specific buttons to push, but it's hopeless. They just don't get it.
I mean, my parents ask me in every single program if they press the upper right hand X to close it. I'm ready to hit myself in the head!
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3