The British education system is contemplating a change in its curriculum. This in itself is nothing earth-shattering but it's the subject that makes one wonder what are they thinking!
According to the Guardian newspaper, primary school students will be encouraged to learn how to blog, use Twitter and Wikipedia instead of history leassons.
Oh goodie! Yet another legimate reason this time, to allow and encourage students to surf the Net! What else!
Students will be required to know about blogging, podcasts, use Wikipedia (such a reliable information source!) which may or may not have the right information depending on the author, and Twitter(?) as their information sources for info. sources of communication.
Twitter? I use Twitter and it consists of a one line statement. Period. What's more - you have a limited amount of bytes in which to make your statement.
For example:"A cow when milked can give up to (insert correct number) gallons/litres per day. " Perhaps the students could be required to re-write the sentence using all the available Twitter bytes and in addition use it as a math exercise to calculate the amount of gallons/litres a cow will give. In addition students would then be required to Wiki as a means of finding background information about cows and/or milking processes.
The Guardian said the draft review requires primary school children to be familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication.
Uh-huh... Next thing you know - YouTube will become part of the curriculum as will texting. I mean - c'mon! Get back to your basic education, peeplz! There's nothing wrong with using the Net as an information tool but even to consider dropping a history course in favor of the Internet?
Maybe the students will have the options to study english or computer lingo.
ReplyDeleteI edited a story my neice wrote (she was about 15) and she was writing things like u, ur, b4, gr8.
~Rhoda