Would You Pass the Information Literacy Test?

Grundelfeldsten writes "The Educational Testing Service -- the maker of the SAT and the GMAT -- has a new test called the Information and Communication literacy assessment. The test is designed to measure your "ability to make sense of the multiple streams of information that our computers throw at us every day," according to a Wired News reporter who just took it and described the process. The questions focus on completing tasks with Internet technologies, like using search engines efficiently and weeding out irrelevant email messages. Are such tasks really tied to technology? Or is "Information and Communication literacy" just a way for ETS to make money by selling more tests?"

Congratulations

[The New Andy]

You passed.

Avoiding flash, popups and cookies gives you IT_literacy++.

Sample Question

[Anonymous Coward]

You are given a Slashdot poll. How should you respond?

A) Choose an honest and accurate option
B) Choose an obviously ridiculous option
C) Do not answer, and complain that your preferred option was unavailable.
D) Refuse to answer, citing moral, philosophical opposition to the poll itself.
E) CowboyNeal

wrong test

[iamthemoog]

Surely a better test would be to measure the user's ability to use tools (spam filters, RSS feed aggregators, tivo-style commercial skipping, popup blockers, slashdot dupe checkers etc) to efficiently cope with / filter the "multiple streams of information" we're all bombarded with?

Re:Sample Question

[the_unknown_soldier]

B) Choose an obviously ridiculous option
If you do this then you should obviously vote D
C) Do not answer, and complain that your preferred option was unavailable.
Who would vote for this! Bit hypocritical? (same applied for D

So you can only technically answer A and E.

hence,
COWBOYNEAL

Re:Sample Question

[iapetus]

But I do have genuine moral, philosophical opposition to the poll, you insensitive clod.

Insensitive clod!

[tqft]

I am male /.er.

Please don't tease the trolls.

Re:SAT, ICT and Smoke Tests

[JustOK]

I can state absolutely that I was not a racist in 1925.

Re:Wow

[Some Bitch]

I can see how I did so awful in college

So can we ;)

Aonhter tset?!

[O-SUSHi]

I alerady fialde teh litarecy tset yuo insenistvie cold!

Havent been taught how to install this flash thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Have I passed?

April 1

[JeyKottalam]

I thought April 1 was almost 2 weeks ago?

OK, I've said that there should be a test to use teh internets, but I was just joking...

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

A) Y C) sux0r B) w00t! D)meh

A B C D 1. May I ask your kindness in moving sum of 28 million US dollars?
A B C D 2. Woul\d yo/u like to s|ho0t ga%llons of c*U%m?
A B C D 3. Would you like a FREE iPOD?
A B C D 4. Me too!
A B C D 5. RUHOTT?
A B C D 6. Does it support OGG?

Re:Sample Question

[chris_eineke]

F) ???
G) Boobies!

Re:tasks not technology

[El_Muerte_TDS]

someone who knows how to code pages in a text editor

What? there's an other way? Now you tell me.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Oooh an other standardized test.

[fishbot]

When will people realize that people are not something that can be graded on 1 demential grading scale, and things like common sense, experience, creativity, determination, or bravery

I'm wondering; did you mean demential (in a state of dementia) or dimensional (having a measure of extent)? I think they both fit just as well in today's IT world!

Next on Slashdot...

[Robotron23]

Do YOU qualify for a free iPod?

Hee hee

[Dancin_Santa]

Geek slapfight!

I love it when the IT monkeys get all uppity and the code monkeys go on the defensive.

"I'm a real engineer"
"No you're not, you just plug cables into computer boxes"
"That's boxen, and you don't even know how to change your password"
"That's your job, IT monkey. My job is to write code"
"I write code"
"bash scripts are not code"
"Yeah, well you run Windows!"
"I also get paid more than you and have an actual career ahead of me"
"Shut up and join the Counterstrike server already"

Re:I took this during trial period at my college

[dstewart]

Wut college r u in that accepts ppl that rite as poorly as u do lol hehehe?

Re:Sample Question

[sp3tt]

Wait, you're saying A and E are different options?

Re:Hee hee

[Otter]

Don't get your hopes up too high -- I'm saving myself for the PhD versus DeVry squabble that's bound to erupt somewhere on this story.

Re:"Are such tasks tied to technology"

[BlewScreen]

And what do you do when it's a programmer who can't use his/her computer? My pet peeve is people who rely on the mouse to use their IDE.

A couple of years ago, I worked with a developer who didn't know the "shortcut" key for build and I thought that was bad... little did I know...

Just yesterday, I watched a "programmer" fix a function on an object with a member named nSize. The function took parameter nSize1 and never set the member.

How does my coworker fix this? He selects nSize from the declaration with the mouse (already, I'm annoyed) and then right clicks to select "copy"...

Then, he scrolls down to the function definition, using the mouse and the scroll bar (not the wheel) and clicks where he's gonna insert the assignment... Then, he uses the keyboard to hit return and tab to put the cursor in the right spot (both hands on the keyboard for this). Then, back to the mouse, right click: "paste".

Ok, so now I'm really annoyed, the amount of text above was typed in about the amount of time he took to do all of this - and "nSize" really isn't all that hard to type, right?

It gets better... He switches both hands back to the keyboard, types a space and hits the "=" key (again, both hands) then, back to the mouse...

What he did next almost caused my head to explode...

You and I both know he's got "nSize" in memory, just waiting to be pasted again, then it's pretty easy to append the number 1 on it... But no, he has to actually select the parameter from the function definition, right click: copy, move the cursor back to the line of code he's trying to write, right click: paste, then type the semi-colon (this is C#).

Holy crap - that's a helluva lotta work for:

nSize = nSize1;

I didn't change the variable name to protect the innocent. This really is the line of code he used the mouse to write.

Of course, this guy uses the mouse to do everything - but seriously, he's been coding for at least five years - does it take that long to learn how to type? Much less use ctrl-c / ctrl-v...

</rant>

-bs

YA Sample Test

[thegnu]

Sample test:

Are you 1337?
yes
no

WHAT R U STOPID OR SUMTHING!!!!?
yes
no

Use 'w00t' in a sentence.

(Men)Type 30wpm with your left hand only.

Where does the green speaker plug go?
blue jack
red jack
green jack
CowboyNeal

Extra credit:
You have 1 comma, 1 single quote, 1 double quote, 1 question mark, and 34 exclamation points. Punctuate:
I WAS AT MY GFS HOUSE B4 AND SHE TOTALLY WAS LIKE MIKE U BITCH GET ME COOKIES AND I WAS LIKE BITCH WHAT YOUR GONNA GET A FATTASS HA UR TEH SUXORZ HAH HA w00t w00t

Re:Oh, that's not the worst.

[C0rinthian]

I work at a phone support desk. When we ask people to power-cycle their computers, we have to tell them to power-cycle that little box under the desk, where they put the floppy disks in. Not the monitor.

Oh, you mean the modem.

/fellow tech support geek