ICT Fluency and High Schools A Workshop Summary (2006) / Chapter Skim
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4 Perspectives on High Schools
4 Perspectives on High Schools
Pages 23-34
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From page 23... ...
This session's speakers agreed that while learning particular technical skills associated with contemporary technology is essential at any time, much more important over the long run is learning how to learn. Given that technologies and their applications change rapidly, and sometimes radically, students need to be prepared for lifelong learning.
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From page 24... ...
An effort in that pedagogical direction, according to Hawkins, is Intel's Teach to the Future Program for providing teacher professional development. This hands-on, face-to-face, 40-hour course, she said, trains teachers to apply the tools of technology in classrooms in meaningful ways and to transform their teaching roles from central source of knowledge to enabler of students in their own individualized quests for knowledge.
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From page 25... ...
It's the high hurdles." She cited another Intel program called Computer Clubhouse that aims to help students respond to higher ICT standards. These computer labs, designed in collaboration with Boston's Museum of Science and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, typically offer underserved inner-city youth "the opportunity to put their hands on the best technology around," said Hawkins.
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From page 26... ...
"In earlier times, students could take one of three courses of study: college prep, which prepared them for college; vocational education, which prepared them for a job; or general education, which essentially prepared them for nothing," he said. "But the thinking in career and technical education today is that it's all about job preparation and further education, not job preparation or further education." Given how quickly the world is changing, with the requisite skills changing along with it, "truly the 20 percent and the 70 percent of the jobs that require technical skills also require education beyond high school." For that reason, Applegate said, employers want people who not only have the technical skills needed for the job but also the foundational skills, which include ICT fluency, for continually learning and adapting.
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From page 27... ...
, covered three basic topics in her talk: the staffing needs of corporations today, how companies tend to measure and evaluate their human resources, and the Partnership's view of how to prepare young people accordingly. The contemporary workplace, said Bruett, is really different from what it was during most of the 20th century.
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From page 28... ...
And that is its ability to improve collaboration, cooperation, and teamwork and help develop people who are analytical thinkers and problem solvers." Bruett indicated that the kind of abilities that Dell as a corporation values do not automatically happen by having every student learn how to use Excel and PowerPoint. While it is important to understand how to use technology, its real power is in helping students become more collaborative, better critical thinkers, and more global in their perspective.
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From page 29... ...
This is actually the law, he said, as the No Child Left Behind Act requires local jurisdictions to make explicit what eighth-graders can do in technology. Gohl's second point was that to help assure the relevance stressed by Applegate, teaching of ICT fluency must be embedded in the core curriculum.
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From page 30... ...
" With multiple people looking at a student's work, disseminated through technology, the probability is considerably higher that at least some of the evaluators will have that gift. Bruett cited just such a technology-based process at Dell, called "360," that not only provides collective evaluation to employees from managers but is multidirectional -- "well rounded" -- as its name implies.
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From page 31... ...
"If corporations assume responsibility to assist" in developing ICT fluency, she said, "their collaboration with community centers will help assure that this sort of learning can take place." J Linda Williams, director of library media services for Anne Arundel County (Maryland)
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From page 32... ...
In that spirit, he quoted Michael Eisenberg's earlier remark, "We are all slowly becoming librarians." TURNING TEACHERS ON "You don't teach fluency; rather, students become fluent," said respondent Julia Fallon. She recounted how one professor in college "pulled me across the line" from mere literacy with spreadsheets, word processing, and the like into the beginnings of ICT fluency.
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From page 33... ...
But by focusing on the end game we have a much better chance of commonality and driving toward the same thing." With respect to "end game," Jean Moon, director of the National Academies' Board on Science Education, observed that although there are multiple standards in multiple subjects, Bruett's recommendations referred not to the discrete levels that standards usually address. She instead spoke in more holistic terms around competencies.
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From page 34... ...
"`We are not asking you to do rocket science,' I tell teachers. `We are asking you do to some very simple things with some tools that convey the content you are trying to get across.'" And more often than not, Fallon added, "all of a sudden you start to see this little light bulb in their head turn on, and it's very exciting for me." Susan Yoon from the University of Pennsylvania cited the need to bridge the traditional separation between formal classroom-learning environments and informal learning places, where students grow increasingly proficient in their knowledge and use of technology.
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