Retrospective analysis of technological literacy of K-12 students in the USA

Assessing technological literacy in the USA will require a large expenditure of resources. While these important initiatives are taking place, it is useful to analyze existing archival data to get a sense of students’ understanding of technology. Such archival data exists from the entries submitted to the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVisions competition conducted during the past 15 years. Although these data are from a targeted population of K-12 students (those who entered the competition), it does provide some baseline data about students’ views and understanding of technology. The analysis of this data reflects which technologies students chose to study and explore for the competition. In forecasting what these technologies may be like in 20 years, students also revealed what they saw as the positive and negative consequences of their chosen technologies. In addition, in their descriptions of their design process, they revealed what factors drove them to reject certain design choices.