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| Provost Tomas Morales has been named to the National ICT Literacy Policy Council. |
Cal Poly Pomona Provost Tomas Morales has been named to the National ICT Literacy Policy Council, which will examine the national standards for Information and Communication Technology Literacy.
“Information and computer literacy, in the conventional sense, are functionally valuable technical skills,” according to a 1996 article by Jeremy Shapiro and Hughes Shelley from the journal Educom Review. “But information literacy should in fact be conceived more broadly as a new liberal art that extends from knowing how to use computers and access information to critical reflection on the nature of information itself, its technical infrastructure, and its social, cultural and even philosophical context and impact – as essential to the mental framework of the educated information-age citizen as the trivium of basic liberal arts (grammar, logic and rhetoric) was to the educated person in medieval society.”
Morales and the other ICT Literacy councilmembers will review assessments and current standards documents, decide on the number of assessment levels desirable and provide descriptions of each.
“I'm proud to have been asked to join the important work of the council,” Morales says. “Their activities run parallel to our campus initiatives and provide yet another opportunity to identify best practices as we continue to pursue the president's vision of continuous improvement and learning-centered activities.”
The council will determine what students should know and be able to do at each level. It will then charge two “cut score” panels to review the core and advanced ICT tests and related data and recommend cut points (where to draw the line) between each of the performance levels. When this work is done, the council will convene for the second time to receive the recommendations and modify and/or accept them as appropriate national ICT standards.
Council membership includes:
- Camilla Benbow, dean of Vanderbilt University College of Education and Behavioral Sciences; member of the National Science Board
- Daniel J. Callison, director of Library Media Education, Indiana University; Representing American Association of School Librarians
- Donna Desrochers, vice president and director of Education for the Committee for Economic Development
- Karen Elzey, senior director of the Institute for a Competitive Workforce, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- Margaret Honey, vice president of the Education Development Center; consultant to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills
- Lana Jackman, president of Melange Information Services, Inc.; representing the National Forum on Information Literary
- Tomas Morales, provost of Cal Poly Pomona
- Barbara O'Conner, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media; chair of the ETS ICT Literacy International Panel
- Loretta L. Parham, director and CEO, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta Center; representing the HBCU Library Alliance
- Terrel L. Rhodes, vice president for Quality, Curriculum and Assessment, Association of American Colleges & Universities
- Sharon Robinson, executive director of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
- Howard L. Simmons, director of the Division of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, Morgan State University; former executive director of Middle States Commission on Higher Education
- Gordon W. Smith, director of System-Wide Library Initiatives, CSU; chair, ICT Literacy Assessment National Advisory Committee
- Barbara Stein, manager of External Partnerships and Advocacy, National Education Association
- Robert Wedgeworth, president of ProLiteracy Worldwide
- Betsy Wilson, dean of University Libraries, University of Washington; representing Association of College & Research Libraries
Council sponsors include the National Forum on Information Literacy in partnership with the Committee for Economic Development, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Institute for a Competitive Workforce (U.S. Chamber of Commerce) and the National Education Association.