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2013/1-2. English Summary
István Dobó – Dóra Lévai – Renáta Tóth – Adrienn Papp-Danka: Értékteremtés és produktivitás a digitális állampolgárság kompetenciarendszerében
ICT with online activities provide unlimited opportunities for users. The continuous growth of information and sharable content is inherent in the productive use of the Internet. However, it raises the question of the digital citizenship’s attitude towards sharing content. This question is particularly relevant for today’s education, because we need to have an answer for the teachers and the students about productive activities in online environment. This paper tries to define productivity and value creation from the view of digital citizenship. Productivity is a pedagogical concept, and value also plays an important role in education. So the aim of this paper is to point out, that both the productivity and value creation are related to traditional pedagogical conceptions: like designing learning process, making learning efficient, sharing knowledge, or thinking about teacher’s role.
Dóra Lévai: Competencies of the digital citizenship and digital literacy competencies in relation to the activities of teachers
To internationally define the continously changing and developing pedagogue roles and competences that are requisite for teachers we can use the ISTE competency list for teachers (ISTE, 2000; ISTE, 2008). The 2008 ISTE competency list for teachers summarizes the opportunities, tasks and duties of the 21st century educators in five wide areas.
The ISTE competency list for teachers (just like the competency list for other stakeholders in the education) fits to the digital citizenship’s competency system. From this system – among the competences related to the activities of the teachers – the area of the digital literacy has a key role, which can be either given by ISTE or the competency list for teachers that are common in Hungary (Falus et al. 2006).
By digital literacy we understand the ability to use the digtal technology and the understanding of when and how these technologies can be used. In this manner the digital literacy concept includes how to teach and how to learn in information society. The importance of this topic can be seen from the fact that digital literacy can be consistently found in the documents describing the key competencies of the 21st century (OECD, 2010; UNESCO, 2008; UNESCO and Microsoft, 2011).
In the past 1-2 years the digital citizenship topic has been highlighted in the international literature. (Ribble, 2009; Kárpáti, 2011; Thieman, 2011; Ohler, 2012) In the Hungarian literature we can get insight about the viewpoints of the digital citizenship’s phenomena from the synthesis written by János Ollé (Ollé, 2011).
Furthermore, recently in relation to the competency system online portals and communities have been launced – mainly abroad – which provide the participants of the education with some useful and practical tips, manuals, materials and posters that can be utilized in the classrooms (e.g.commonsensemedia.org/educators).
As Ribble stated, there is a need for programs in schools, giving guidance and support for the knowledge and the ability of application of digital citizenship (Ribble, 2011).
After the emerge of the Internet, a digital world has been formed and communication online has become part of everyday life. New tools and channels were formed to help us keep in touch with the others at any corner of the world, at any time of the day. Communicating online can be divided into synchronous and asynchronous communication. Both can happen in digital world but they differ in some points/aspects. The first one means that the participants are time-synchronised, appearing at the same time. Phone calls or chat messages are good examples for this kind of communication. On the other hand, asynchronous information-exchanging/exchange does not require the parties to be present at the same time. E-mails and message boards or blogs are asynchronous, for instance.
For digital citizens it is particularly important to have the skills of using these tools and recognise the new opportunities of exchanging information. Digital communication is not only about making friends online – many changes have occured at schools, official administration and in society, as well, and all this due to rapid changes. Teachers can send e-mails to the parents, anyone can report errors or ask for advice online in case of necessity and many public affairs happen online these days.
Expressing ourselves and understanding others is especially of great importance in order to thrive both online and offline in the age of information society where having and using the information needed and deleting them after they become useless, is the key of surviving. Permanent changes of digital world requires flexibility and constant learning from the users. The present paper contains a short history of human communication and summarizes the new elements of the digital communication. It presents the most-used tools for online information exchange and shows a number of former results about gender-specific digital communication. It also highlights some situations where digital communication has resulted in changes, such as at schools and official administration.
Anita Takács: A felnőtt, mint digitális állampolgár
Publications based on the topic of digital citizenship are mostly dealing with the school education and teaching methods of the up growing generation, which prepare teachers and educators to show proper guidelines about the behavioral normative of the digital society, in order to become responsible and useful members of the culture. Pupils educated within the schooling system have the chance to become conscious users of technology. Adults without the competence of digital literacy will sooner or later come across the digital technology during their studies, work or any other fields of their lives. Documents from the EU highlight the importance and need of effective learning/teaching methods and the importance and need of ICT tools. As a result of the European recommendations, the national government strategy is prepared to ensure the possibility of life-long study. Andragogy – which means the conception and practice of out-of-school education of adults – consists of three different areas: training, teaching and educating of adults. The object of andragogy is a grown-up student with unique learning style, has rich life- and work experience, so the pre-knowledge, needs and motivation must be considered. Basic school education is proven not to be enough to be able to fulfill the commitments of the society and the labor market. Adults can only be successful if they are armored with the right skills and competences, this is the reason why adult education has its main stream around the competence development. The reference frame of the year 2006 from the European Union determines the eight most important key-competences required for being a full member of a knowledge-based society, which has digital competence as an element. Digital competence requires and assumes multi-level skills. By analyzing these skills we will reach the determination of a digital citizen, as well as to the nine elements of the competence system of citizenship. Development of the digital literacy of adults has a significant importance in the aspect of employment, education and everyday life of people. Learning and developing the skills for digital literacy is a decision that must be made and cannot be postponed or delayed. Digital literacy skills are not only required for schooling, but are essential for any other fields of our lives, weather it is work or recreation. Electrical administration (banking, civil services), online communication, trading are all to make our lives more comfortable and livable, meaning that adults must also take bigger parts, since it is for their own good.
Andrea Magyar: Structure and the operation of multi-stage tests
With the development of technology the traditional paper-based measurement-evaluation forms are gradually being replaced by computer-based tests. Among the many forms of the computer based assessment, the adaptive test is one of the most advanced forms. During the adaptive testing procedure the students are administered test questions selected on the basis of the correctness of their previous responses. If the answer is right, they get a more difficult item, if no then an easier item is selected and administered to the students. This way the tests became tailored to the students’ ability levels. Depending on the administration process, there are several forms of adaptive tests. One of the most commonly used forms is the multi-stage test, in which short, fixed tests (called modules) are administered instead of separate items.
The aim of this study is to give a brief overview of the structure and the operation of multi-stage tests. For adaptive tests a calibrated itempool is essential condition. In the first part we discuss the main points of the development of the itempool with the role of the item response theory in it. In the adaptive testing process the use of item-response theory is essential as during the testing procedure the items are administered according to their certain parameters, such as their difficulty, discrimination or guessing. Many itempools contains other parameters, like content areas, as well. It the next part the different structures of multi-stage tests are introduced and the steps of the development of the following stages. Here we introduce some research issues dealing with the sufficient number of items, stages and modules in a certain test. In the last part there are some issues of the branching rules and scoring methods. Comparing the multi-stage tests and the item-based adaptive tests, the multi-stage tests have a lot of advantages, such as easier development, greater administrative control and simpler testing procedure. The students have opportunities to review their previous steps, this way they are helped to reach better results. As the modules are tailored to the students’ ability level, there is a greater challenge for each student.
With this paper we would like to contribute to the spread of adaptive testing methods.
