Hi Bastien, A good way to measure the skills needed in this rapidly changing world is to look into Information Literacy Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_literacy ) references the American Library Association's description which is fairly good
The American Library Association's (ALA) Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, Final Report states, "To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" Evaluating these skills would be a very good start. Please note that this is often confused with IT Literacy, which is another thing altogether. Many developing countries Education systems see their role in ICT as IT literacy development. Ian Thomson RICS and OLPC Coordinator Noumea SPC Phone +687 26 01 44 -----Original Message----- From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Bastien Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:12 PM To: Edward Cherlin Cc: iaep; Yamandu Ploskonka Subject: Re: [IAEP] inquiry on constructionism advantages Edward Cherlin <echer...@gmail.com> writes: > Ask about teaching children to work together, as with collaboration in > Sugar, rather than individual achievement alone. How will the > government test that? > > Ask about solving problems that may have no single right answer, and > certainly don't have a known right answer. How will the government > test that? > > Ask about what citizens need to understand to participate in > politics--Finance, statistics, history, geography, civics... How will > the government test that? > > In order to employ all of the qualified graduates from these schools, > the economy must be prepared to support a massive expansion of > entrepreneurship. How will the government pass that test? This is a very common line of reasoning, at least among the constructionist crowd: (1) "the world is changing so fast that your tests are already obsolete (as your instructionist method). (2) We are promoting a method that prepares children for a rapidly changing world. >From these premisses, they often draw the conclusion that "testing constructionism" is irrelevant. Does anyone can explain me why? I think the effect of constructionism can and should be assessed, as any educational method. Maybe assessing constructionism is a specific challenge, but we should not escape it. At least, the fact that the world is "changing so fast"* calls for more guarantees in our teaching methods, not for more blind experimentation. Teachers understand this very well, that are often accused of being too conservative. * When hearing this, I always wonder how it feels to live in a world that is _not_ changing very fast. My imagination is just mute. -- Bastien _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
