Proposal Suggests UK Students Study Wikipedia and Twitter

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."

Next week

[darthvader100]

How to Google.

This is just a joke to teach kids how to do things they already do. These days your kids know how to use your new DVD player or computer before you do. Ratherteach kids the meaning of the word "Library" and "citation needed" if they have to go the wikipedia way.

Teaching them how to admin a linux VM would be more useful

Re:Twitter is pretty retarded

[Swizec]

My point is that isn't really teh content at all. Hell, most people don't even talk so much about what they're doing twitter as they are about more in-depth things, like how they feel for instance. Sharing interesting photos quickly is also quite popular, pasting that awesome link you just saw, but don't have anyone to show ... twitter will love it. And so on.

Hell, just earlier this week I got a job offer because I was venting on twitter about how insanely unfair my project manager was being.

When I Was a Lad...

[Quothz]

Y'know, when I was a schoolkid, we were required to keep a daily journal in some English classes. I don't see a fundamental difference between that and blogging as a method of developing writing skills.

We were also taught how to use encyclopedias, and allowed to use them as source material. Given that the error-per-word rate in Wikipedia is lower than Encyclopedia Britannica, I see nothing wrong with using it. Better, Wikipedia lists primary sources, something I don't recall from ink-and-paper encyclopedias. Teaching kids to use it well seems like a fine idea to me.

Twitter and podcasts? Not so much. I don't see the educational value in these. I could see a school doing a podcast as a class project, I s'pose, but as part of a formal curriculum?

Re:Twitter is pretty retarded

[L4t3r4lu5]

Another post for which we need a special +6 rating.

Re:Stupid

[necro81]

I wonder: was there a similar movement in the 50s to use TV to educate kids?

[I'm not trolling, I seriously want to know if society's already covered this ground.]

Re:Twitter is pretty retarded

[Linker3000]

Funny thing is, I ignored Twitter for a long time and then decided to give it a go. Sure a lot of the stuff is banal, but I found that if I used a selective, real-time filtering service such as Twitterfall, I can keep an eye out for things that are relevant to my interests - for example, I setup a few tech search terms: Centos, Linux, Asterisk, Draytek etc., and among other things, caught sight of someone mentioning a very useful script he had jusst finished for monitoring the state of SIP VoIP trunks, and also found someone was having a similar Linux problem to me and we bounced a few ideas around. I have also discussed a couple of issues with a BBC tech reporter and a freelance broadcaster, and helped out someone with a technical problem I experienced and fixed some time ago.

'In yer face' Twitter is pointless and a time waster, but it's won me over as a useful tool to have relevant issues come to me rather than having to go hunt for them.