Daily Archives: 1/31/2005

Personalized RSS

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Steve Sloan has an interesting post today where he references a ZDNet article and talks about one-to-one, secure RSS feeds. Interesting concept and one I hadn’t heard of before. Steve argues that this could be a great way for teachers and students to exchange information. I can see some potential there, especially, as Steve suggests, in an online learning environment as a way of meting out content.

We’re looking at new student information systems in our district this spring. Wouldn’t it be cool if all the information that parents might expect to find if they visited the “parent portal” was available as a secure, personalized RSS feed? It would be quite a chore for individual teachers to generate all the information for each student’s feed individually. The real power is leveraging all the information that’s being generated automatically by the integrated student systems and sending it out via RSS to parents (and students). School events, discipline information, attendance, school menus, account balances, library overdue notices, changes in bus schedules, teacher communications, etc. would all be interesting to include.

ETS launches information literacy test

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Everyone’s favorite test and stress producer, ETS, has developed a new exam that purports to measure students’ information and communication technology proficiency. According to a press release from November, 2004:

Unique among literacy assessments, the ETS ICT Literacy Assessment measures multiple aspects of ICT proficiency. Rather than pose multiple-choice questions, it requires test takers to use basic technology as a tool to arrive at solutions. In that way, the test demands that students use technology to perform information management tasks, such as extracting specific information from a database, developing a spreadsheet, or composing an e-mail summarizing research findings. 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.

I looked at the Flash demo of the test and it was pretty interesting. We’ve talked at work occasionally about finding ways to evaluate our students’ information literacy skills, but I doubt a test of this type would be supported by building administrators and teachers who have to put up with a lot of testing already. (The ETS ICT literacy test is designed for college students anyway.) It’s not sufficient to ask students if they know how to make PowerPoint presentations or manipulate a spreadsheet. That doesn’t mean they have sophisticated information literacy skills. Have you ever noticed that teachers are sometimes overly impressed by students who display advanced technology skills? Fair or not, kids who know how to push the right buttons on a computer probably skate by too easily when their work is graded. Too often, teachers, who may not be all that sophisticated with technology themselves, go for style over substance. But I digress…

Has anyone developed an information literacy assessment for pre-college students? I’d be really interested to know more about it and how it’s working to inform teachers and other school leaders in your organization about what your students can do with information and technology.