Using Technology in Helping Students Achieve 21st Century Skills: A Pilot Study

As everyone enters the 21st Century there is a great deal of discussion in business and education circles alike about the type of skills the youth will need to survive and thrive in this century. At the same time, there is little known today about the level of 21st Century skills students currently have. In part this is because, as a nation, people are still in the process of articulating the specific skills needed, and in part it is because too little systemic examination of existing skill levels has been undertaken. Educational Testing Service (ETS) has begun to address this issue by developing a 75-minute scenario-based test to measure high school senior and college freshmen students' Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy skills; skills defined by ETS as, "the ability of post-secondary students to: define, access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create, and communicate information in a technological environment". During the spring of 2006, ETS offered high schools and universities across the country the opportunity to take an early version of the assessment. One of those high schools was Skowhegan Area High School (SAHS) in Maine School Administrative District #54 (MSAD #54). A total of 279 students (70 ninth graders, 26 tenth graders, 162 twelfth graders and 21 "others") took the ETS Early 2006 Administration Core Level test along with 658 high school seniors from eight other high schools across the country. An additional 2,559 college students at various universities also took the ICT exam. An analysis of the test results for Skowhegan Area High School revealed that the schools' students performed well on the assessment when compared with other students participating in the April 2006 testing. The results suggested that the work Skowhegan has been doing preparing students for the 21st Century is showing some progress. The pilot study presented in this paper demonstrates the potential impact of interventions specifically designed to address 21st Century Skills. It also demonstrates the importance and feasibility of systematically developing curriculum interventions and collecting and analyzing impact data. Eight appendices are included: (1) 21st Century Skills; Results of Education Testing Services ICT Literacy Assessment; (2) Project timeline and tasks; (3) Intervention teacher guide and resources; (4) Pre-and post-assessments; (5) Websites used for assessments; (6) Student interview questions; (7) Teacher interview questions; and (8) A