Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for Getting Smart, Michael Niehoff talks about redefining readiness and how we should measure the preparedness of students. Many suggestions involve college and career readiness, but Niehoff proposes a "ready for anything" approach.

· What has changed to call for a redefining of readiness? What are some important qualities in readiness? How are teachers preparing students for their future? 

· Here's more on measuring "readiness" after high school


Literacy has traditionally been used to describe the functional ability to read, write, speak and listen. One was literate if one was able to communicate in their work and personal surroundings. To me, it was about a baseline of functionality and even survival. Well, it would make sense that the technological revolution would impact our literacies as well. What do we, all of us and especially our young people, need now in order to effectively communicate, work and function in this new century and the new economy? Well, because of the technology influence, many of these new literacies have a tech foundation. They are things like media literacy, information literacy, computer literacy, digital literacy and even social media literacy. There is a lot of crossovers here. But what do these mean in terms of learning, education and work? Let’s examine Social Media literacy up close to serve as an illustration.

It might be hard to find something that has transformed the world more in the last decade than social media.  Indeed, governments, corporations, organizations and social movements have been formed, or even transformed, through the effective use and implementation of social media.

In education, as usual, we have been slow to understand and ultimately embrace effective uses of social media. We are all very aware of the negative activity, topics or images on social media.  Indeed, it’s very reminiscent of the early concerns about the internet.

When the web was first available to the public, we heard lots of concerns related to everything from personal security to pornography. And even though those issues were and are real, we also soon realized the potentially positive power of the Internet to transform business and economics, travel, communication and more.

Read the full article about redefining readiness by Michael Niehoff at Getting Smart.