Thinking about the Technology and Literacy Connection
As you consider the literacy skills that you will be teaching students in your elementary and middle school classrooms, one of the ideas that you could begin to explore in your professional responses is the idea of “tech literacy.” Here is a recent article about assessment of tech literacy. As you think about this, you might ask yourself:
- In what ways is understanding and using technology a literacy skill? How does it relate to reading and writing?
- To what extent do I, as a language arts teacher, have the responsibility to teach my students these skills in an already jam-packed curriculum and school year?
- What are the specific skills that tests like these are attempting to assess and how do these skills relate to what you are teaching in a writing workshop including elements of choice, time, inquiry, revision, and publication?
Education Week: Tests of Tech Literacy Still Not Widespread Despite NCLB Goals
Any educator who’s ever had to ask a pupil to fix a computer might be surprised to learn that not all students are technologically proficient—or at least not savvy enough to be considered “technologically literate.”While that term has no universal definition, the core idea could be boiled down to this: Technologically literate students not only know how to operate hardware and software—they can also analyze the information flowing through it, evaluate that digital content’s relative merit and relevance, and use it creatively and ethically in communicating with others.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law six years ago, made it a national goal for all 8th graders to be technologically literate. Unlike reading and math, though, tech literacy does not factor into the law’s school accountability provisions, and most states do not administer separate tech-literacy tests statewide.
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