Twitter has really entered mainstream consciousness! Everybody is “a-twitter”! And so too are new curriculum designers in the UK. A report from the Guardian yessterday announced that the new curriculum proposes the following:
Children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain “fluency” in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell.
Congratulations to these future forward thinking curriculum designers! Here in the NSW social media is BANNED from schools. I am disgusted in the huge gap this is causing for our students, who are not being prepared for their social futures sufficiently because of these limitations.
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Here! Here!
Hi Angela, I am shocked by the short-sited ban on social media from all schools in N.S.W. I think this is a mistake that will come to haunt society in N.S.W in the future with a lack of critical skills across a whole generation. Broad digital literacy, as you write, should be taught in school. It seems crazy to exclude media that millions of people are using to communicate with from the education system.
But, watching video of the Q&A session in Melbourne with Stephen Conroy on the ABC , I am not surprised that Australia is heading in this direction. Stupidville.
Thanks for the opportunity to write this. Although I don’t feel much better.
Thanks for commenting Jim
You should have seen the twitter backchannel during that Q & A session. Outrage, disgust, and yes… embarrassment. Stupidville is correct. But let me assure you that there is a grassroots groundswell of wonderful teachers doing their best to get noticed.