career and college readiness

Technology Competency

WHY A TECHNOLOGY COMPETENCY REQUIREMENT?

The use of technology has become one of the basic skills for the 21st century. Our state legislature recognized this when they wrote a directive to include technology literacy as one of the Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs).

The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) has defined Technology Literacy as:

“The ability to responsibly, creatively and effectively use appropriate technology to

• Communicate
• Access, collect, manage, integrate, and evaluate information
• Solve problems and create solutions
• Build and share knowledge

Improve and enhance learning in all subject areas and experiences.”           
                                                                      --OSPI December 1, 2008

The Sumner School District has in place a technology graduation requirement based on national standards and high school-ready skills. In their daily school experiences, students are often expected to word process papers, create graphs to display their data, conduct internet research, and make presentations. Students without basic technical literacy have a distinct disadvantage over those possessing these skills. The Sumner School District is committed to ensuring that all students entering high school obtain these skills.

HOW CAN THE TECHNOLOGY COMPETENCY REQUIREMENT BE MET?

In the Sumner School District, the basic Technology Literacy courses are called Applied Communication. Students are enrolled in these courses 1 semester each in 6th grade and 7th grade. Students who successfully complete these courses and meet competency, satisfy the technology requirement for graduation from high school and have the skills required for success with technology-related high school tasks.

Students new to the district, or not demonstrating competence by the end of 7th grade, will be enrolled in a 1 semester, 8th grade,  Applied Communications class.

Students not demonstrating competence at the end of 8th grade may do so in one of the following ways:

• Enroll in a high school computer applications course that meets the tech competency requirement
• Test out by demonstrating skills in a series of assessments administered and scored by applied communications teachers from the middle and high schools

  The test consists of five proficiency areas

  Keyboarding Timing and Accuracy
  Objective Test (terms and concepts)
  Word Processing Task
  Spreadsheet Task
  PowerPoint Task

• Successfully complete (C or better) an online computer applications course (subject to approval by Career and College Readiness Department)
• Successfully complete (C or better) a comparable community or technical college computer applications course (subject to approval by Career and College Readiness Department)

Contact your child’s school counselor for course approval or to find out about tech competency testing schedules.

KEYBOARDING TEST

• Each student must type from a prepared manuscript for a full three minutes.
• Each mistake in the following areas is counted as one error: spelling, typing, punctuation, spacing (leaving no spaces or putting two spaces between words), indentations, and capitalizations, inconsistent spacing between sentences.
• Typing double words, word omissions, and word additions are also errors (each word omission and/or word addition counts as one error).

OBJECTIVE TEST—MULTIPLE CHOICE FORMAT
Each student must take a 40 question multiple-choice test.

Questions will test components of the Washington State Technology Standards covered by the middle school Applied Communications computer literacy curriculum:

• Computer systems
• Software applications
• Digital citizenship (legal and ethical use of information)
• Cybersafety (keeping yourself and your personal information safe)

The following terms are either in test questions or answer choices

Glossary

Criteria for passing: 75% (30 correct answers out of 40 questions).  

WORD PROCESSING TASK (Tutorial)
One page of research-paper style formatting using text and citation information provided in the task documents. Students may use on-line citation resources during the exam

• Type and format a research paper following the directions on the task sheet
• Change fonts, font sizes, and font styles (bold, underlining, and italics)
• Change margins and line spacing; set, modify, and use tabs (left, right, center, and decimal), or create and format tables; create headers; insert and format images; use justification (left, right, center, and full)
• Save the document

Criteria for passing: 75%
Spelling or grammar errors include, but are not limited to, mistakes in the following areas: spelling; capitalization; letter duplication; word substitution; omitted or added words; punctuation; spacing between words; not using bold, italics or underlining when indicated; incorrect line spacing, margins, font size, justification, and tab placement.

POWERPOINT TASK (Tutorial)
Using Microsoft PowerPoint, each student must be able to:

• Add text as directed
• Apply animations to text entries
• Apply slide transitions
• Insert new slides
• Adjust text color, font, size and style for easy readability
• Adjust background color, texture, gradient and pattern
• Add an image from Clip Art or the Internet to a slide
• Create a presentation file (given the necessary information)
  

Criteria for passing: 75%.
Spelling or grammar errors include, but are not limited to, mistakes in the following areas: spelling; capitalization; letter duplication; word substitution; omitted or added words; punctuation; spacing between words; not using bold, italics or underlining when indicated; incorrect line spacing, margins, font size, justification, and tab placement.

SPREADSHEET TASK (Tutorial)
Using Microsoft Excel and information provided in the task documents, each student must be able to:

• Create, modify and save a single spreadsheet file
• Format cells/fields as appropriate and as indicated in the task directions
• Enter calculated values in appropriate cells using autosum with the specified format
• Create a graph based on data included in the spreadsheet
• Include titles and labels for graph

Calculators and mental calculations may not be used.

Criteria for passing: 75%.
Spelling or grammar errors include, but are not limited to, mistakes in the following areas: spelling; capitalization; letter duplication; word substitution; omitted or added words; punctuation; spacing between words; not using bold, italics or underlining when indicated; incorrect line spacing, margins, font size, justification, and tab placement.

Course catalogs are subject to change.