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Saturday, April 21, 2007

American i-skills

Thanks to the InformationLiteracy Land of Confusion (which has recently taken a new web address, http://www.information-literacy.net/ by the way, as Michael Lorenzen mentioned on a comment to the blog a week or so ago) for alerting me to the fact that the Educational Testing Service in the USA has changed the name of its ICT Literacy test to the iskills test. There is information about the test here. The press release on the ETS website has a quote about why they chose it " 'We selected iSkills because it is catchy, contemporary and relevant,' says Mary Ann Zaborowski, ETS’s Director of Product Management for the iSkills™ assessment. 'The new name is more spirited and better reflects the nature of this very different type of assessment . . . it’s interactive and really cutting edge.' " Hmmmm ... notice that little ™? I'm not a trademark expert, but I wonder if they can sustain that, given that JISC launched the i-skills initiative a couple of years ago (see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/
publications/pub_sissdocs.aspx
) Perhaps the "-" makes all the difference, but I think that might count as Prior Art in intellectual property terms.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Cherry tree, part of Sheffield University's Firth Court in the background, April 2007.

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