Proposal Suggests UK Students Study Wikipedia and Twitter 252
An anonymous reader writes "Who needs crusty old rubbish like the Victorian era or World War II? Instead, an Ofsted report leaked to The Guardian details of proposals to teach UK primary school children how to use Wikipedia, Twitter, podcasts and blogs. Presumably they're already au fait with b3ta and 4chan. And you already can't get the kids off Bebo without a crowbar."
Twitter is pretty retarded (Score:3, Informative)
It's basically a blog for people who are not able to write enough good stuff for blogs.
"I just took a dump" and other messages are basically the essence of Twitter and I can do exactly the same on a random IRC channel.
Wikipedia on the other hand is more interesting because it shows what perception can do to people and how that combines to an article. I teaches checking the sources instead of simply copypasting your info(although some people still do that).
Twitter has none of those redeeming values and is outside the study of microblogs or something similar(like speed of information) a completely useless research subject.
Re:sage (Score:2, Informative)
Sage goes in every field. ... duh.
Re:Grammer Nitpick (Score:3, Informative)
You're not really supposed to start sentences off with conjunctions.
You are mistaken. Even in formal writing, starting a sentence with a conjunction is acceptable. But do so carefully; it's easy to write an unclear or poorly-structured sentence that way.
Re:Grammer Nitpick (Score:5, Informative)
And then came the Grammar Nazis. But for them, we would be able to carry on conversations without pointless interruptions.
Speaking as one who spent about five years as a professional editor, it is perfectly fine to start sentences with conjunctions. Like anything, it shouldn't be overused. But I will take a sentence that begins with "but" over one that inserts "however" as a clause any day. "However" reads weak. Similarly, if you can start a sentence with "and" where the only alternative would be to use a longer word or phrase, go with "and." People use it that way all the time in normal speech, and written text that sounds like natural speech is almost always preferable to a string of long words that were chosen out of a desire to sound "proper."
And by the way, starting sentences with conjunctions is not even a new practice. "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?" It's just difficult to teach young writers to do it properly, which is why most high-school English teachers stick to the (false) rule. Your writing will be better if you don't do it at all than if you do it badly.