About Background Information

In 1998, the State Department of Education published two documents intended to set academic standards and serve as guiding structures for comprehensive and high-quality educational experiences for every student.  The first of these documents, Connecticut’s Common Core of Learning (CCL), delineates Connecticut’s standard for an educated citizen and identifies the skills, knowledge and character expected of all Connecticut’s public secondary school graduates.  As such, the CCL establishes a vision of what all students should know and be able to do as the result of their entire K-12 educational experience. 

In recognition of the growing need for all students to be able to use information and technology resources, CCL expectations for students included a section entitled “Learning Resources and Information Technology.”  These specific skills and competencies are found in “Foundational Skills and Competencies,” the section of the CCL that reflects the cross-disciplinary skills and competencies that provide a foundation for all learning. 

The second document, The Connecticut Framework:  K-12 Curricular Goals and Standards, provides an expanded picture of what all students should know and be able to do in a range of content areas, including Learning Resources and Information Technology.  The frameworks were designed to provide basic content and performance standards around which individual districts would develop their own K-12 programs of instruction. 

Since 1998, national guidelines have further defined the scope and sequence of these skills and competencies.

Information Power:  Building Partnerships for Learning, published by the American Association for School Librarians (AASL) and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), 1998.  Using the overarching goal that “All students will become effective users of information and ideas” the guidelines present nine Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning.  The nine standards are clustered into three areas:  information literacy; independent learning; and social responsibility.

·         The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) published, in 1999, National Educational Technology Standards for Students: Connecting Curriculum and Technology.  Fourteen foundational standards for students are grouped into:  basic operations and concepts; social, ethical and human issues; technology productivity tools; technology communications tools; technology research tools; and technology problem-solving and decision-making tools.

·         Most recently (2005), the U.S. Department of Education released its new national educational technology plan, A National Education Technology Plan: The Future Is Now.  Goals Four, Five and Six of the plan relate directly to student learning, demonstrating the interrelated nature of information and technology literacy.

In light of these guidelines, the Learning Resources and Information Technology Framework has been revised.  The new Connecticut Information and Technology Literacy Framework flows from, and is aligned with, these national goals, standards and principles for student learning.  The student performance standards for grades 4, 8 and 12 provide additional guidance and specificity to assist local districts in developing a K-12 program in information and technology literacy.  The framework also is intended to demonstrate the interrelated nature of information and technology skills and competencies.  Local districts must build upon the content and performance standards in the framework to design a more detailed, K-12 local curriculum that includes more discrete skills and competencies and integrates them into and across the content area curricula.  There should be a logical progression of student learning from grades K-12, encompassing not only what students should know --the mechanics of using technology and information access, but also what students should be able to do--the intellectual processes and strategies that must be applied to information and technology resources for learning, understanding, application and communication.

The Context of the Information and Technology Literacy Curriculum

A planned, systematic, ongoing and integrated curriculum for information and technology literacy represents a major paradigm shift from the way information and technology literacy programs are currently being delivered.  The following chart illustrates the change in perspective that will lead to the type of program that must be in place to ensure that all students have the opportunity to learn and practice information and technology skills and competencies.