Digital Smarts - Online Common Core Testing – What Tech Skills Does Your Child Need ?

In the 2014-2015 school year, nearly 12 million K-12 students in public districts will be taking college readiness assessments online for the first time. While the knowledge of content may be there, do students have the technology skills necessary to perform well? Although many kids are familiar with using digital technology and have the skills necessary to navigate their devices and play online games, experts have found that didn’t necessarily translate to the skills needed to take an online assessment effectively.

What are some of the technology skills your children will need to perform well on online tests?

• Familiarity with the keyboard including key layout (especially delete, arrow keys and the space bar) and how to select text and operate drop-down menus. Ideally, students in third grade and up should have some basic keyboarding skills before they take the online assessments.
• Basic mouse skills including clicking, selecting and dragging and dropping objects, adding text boxes, unselecting items, and scrolling on a variety of style screens.
• Using online tools like a calculator, equation editor, protractor, ruler and video player.
• Being able to plot points on graphs and charts.

It is important to realize these are skills that students are expected to have and will be at a disadvantage if they do not.