Learning in a Digital Age: Insights into the Issues: The Skills Students Need for Technological Fluency.
Learning in a Digital Age: Insights into the Issues: The Skills Students Need for Technological Fluency.
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数字时代的学习：对问题的见解：学生熟练掌握技术所需的技能。
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发表时间：
1998
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
K. Fulton
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文献类型：
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作者：
K. Fulton
Editor's Note: This Executive Summary is reprinted with permission of the Milken Family Foundation, the copyright owner. To read the full report, log onto www.milkenexchange.org. The computer is no longer "the new kid in school." Since the early 1980s, when computers were first used in schools, more than $3 billion has been spent on hardware, software, teacher training, and connections. But are our students technologically literate or, as many have begun to demand, technologically fluent? These are important questions for America's success -- and that of its children -- in the information age, but we need a consensus on what it means for students to be facile with technology. Is there a set of "necessary skills" that define technological fluency? Can this set be expanded to include the broader communication and information skills students will need in the global economy of the twenty-first century? In considering this issue, we must recognize that the effective use of technology to develop learning, communication, and information skills is the result of many factors, chief of which are the teacher, her competence and ability to shape technology-based learning activities to meet students' learning needs. Other factors: -- software, access, school support in allowing time and experimentation to try new things -- all have a place in the impact technology can have on students and their achievement, as has been noted in many past analyses[1] But there is another key element, one that may seem obvious, but which in fact has been overlooked in many past studies of computer-based learning in the classroom. One recent study put it succinctly: "The effect of computer-based learning technologies in facilitating student learning and performance is seen only when participants have the knowledge and skill to use the technology."[2] While this may seem self-evident, the authors report that it was perhaps because of the "assumed power of the technology" that past researchers have not evaluated the knowledge and skill base necessary for students to use technology most effectively. What do students need to know and do with technology? Unlike the more stable content and goals we have for other areas of school study, technology continues to change and evolve; with these changes come ever-new goals for how technology should serve learning, and what students should know about technology. A review of the "prevailing wisdom" about appropriate technology use since the early 1980s takes one down an ever-turning road that includes programming in BASIC, then with LOGO; and on to drill and practice applications on integrated systems; word-processing and curriculum-specific tools like history databases, simulations, and microcomputer-based labs; then multimedia; the Internet; and now Web page design. While there may be some logic to this progression, the reality is that, just as educators get their arms around one approach, with the attendant investments in software, training and possible curricular readjustments, the messages about appropriate technology use change. Assessments of Computer Competence These changing expectations have been reflected in past large-scale assessments of "computer competence," such as the 1985-86 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) national assessment of computer competence. This national sampling of third-, seventh- and eleventh-grade students assessed their knowledge and skills in using a computer, using questions dealing with recognition or recall of specific facts, and procedures related to computer use. Measures of computer literacy, not unlike those in the first NAEP study, were targeted in the Computers in Education Study undertaken by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).[3] The 1992 study tested and analyzed basic computer knowledge and skills in 12 countries, with test items developed and reviewed by an international team, and translated into several languages. …
