Committee on Information Technology Literacy

What is the proper focus of this project?  Specifically, should the
committee be thinking in terms of information technology literacy for all
undergraduates or for all high school school graduates?  What are the pros 
and cons of each?

To have the broadest impact, our committee should think about
information technology literacy for both groups, perhaps as two separate
discussions (with a two-part report).  Serious equity issues would be
raised if we ignored the high school group.  I would also recommend that
we widen this group to include all primary school graduates as well. 

What is the role of programming in information technology literacy?

Programming (that is, the idea of algorithmic problem solving) has a key
role in information technology literacy at both levels.  While this often
reduces, in practice, to coding in a particular language, we need to find a
more fundamental and broadly applicable way to teach people how to
approach problems algorithmically.  This skill is broadly useful across
many disciplines, and yet it is not often taught well.  

At the college level, there may be a role for programming within the
emerging "quantitative literacy" requirement for all undergraduates.  The 
May 1993 issue of CACM is devoted to information technology literacy in K-12 
education (Elliot Soloway was the guest editor).  Our K-12
discussions can be informed by the articles in that issue (especially the
ACM model high school curriculum in computer science) and many of the
people who contributed to it.

What is the role of specific computational artifacts (e.g., skills
with spreadsheets, word processors, e-mail, Web browsers) in
information technology literacy?

These come and they go.  Whatever the artifacts of the day may be, they
should be included as examples of how people use tools to solve
computational problems.  The important goal here is to teach people how
to learn to use new technological tools, thus enabling them to become
lifelong learners.  The use of "toy" artifacts should be avoided whenever
real artifacts are widely and cost-effectively available.

What is the proper balance between science and technology, theory
and experiment?

At the elementary and secondary levels, the hands-on (experiment) needs 
to lead and motivate the theory.  At the college level, more and earlier 
attention to theory and principles should occur, although experiment may 
still lead the way.  The balance between the two depends on the goals of 
the specific college (preparing graduates for specific careers vs preparing 
graduates for graduate study).