

Twitter is put on new primary school curriculum  - walidghaleb
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/twitter/5050261/Twitter-is-put-on-new-primary-school-curriculum.html

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swombat
Considering that most users of Twitter, and the creators of Twitter, still
have no idea "how to use the social networking website Twitter", I think this
is extremely premature.

Perhaps it would be wiser to wait until people actually figure out how the
hell to use the damn thing before appointing people who likely haven't even
heard of it to teach it to children.

Chances are the average kid will know more about Twitter than the average
school teacher soon enough, anyway.

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kuhnalex
I agree, just teaching a child how to use twitter or a blog is not that
relevant unless it can be tied to instruction. The proposal seems rather vague
on how this will be implemented in the classroom.

Unfortunately, it is rare that teachers are ever trained properly and provided
with curriculum ideas for using technology, but rather have to figure out how
to do use it themselves. Work has been done on using the different online
aspects and cell phones in the classroom to teach about various subjects, but
without a teacher getting this instruction they fall back to the simplest
activity possible and lose the educational value.

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walidghaleb
I don’t think anyone reasonable can argue the merits of integrating computers
and technology into school curriculums, however this plan by the schools
inspection authority in England has the potential for parents to incorrectly
point the finger at technology as the main reason why kids won’t be taught
traditional subjects:

“One curriculum theme - "human, social and environmental understanding" -
combines history, geography and religious education. Schools can decide which
two periods of British history children study, allowing them to drop
traditional features such as the Victorians and the Second World War.”

The proposal to lump subjects into themes, giving schools leeway to choose
what subjects or topics within those subjects to drop, has nothing to do with
the integration of technology into the curriculum. The backlash will
undoubtedly link the two and say that children in schools are not learning
WWII history in favour of learning how to blog or use Twitter.

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ashleyw
Not sure about Twitter (I love it, but I don't think its necessarily useful to
students), but I'm glad they're rethinking computers in schools. You shouldn't
leave school at 16 with pretty advanced knowledge on maths and physics, but
not how to use a computer further than powerpoint…not in this day and age!

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marksutherland
I suspect the addition of twitter to the proposal was purely to ensure it
recieved the attention it's now getting.

Also, primary school is equivalent to elementary school is in the states, so
this doesn't mean that pupils will never be taught about some of things that
have been made non-compulsory. In particular, as the article points out, the
second world war is covered extensively during secondary school (i.e. high
school). And it's also worth mentioning that this probably only applies to the
english curriculum.

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TweedHeads
Marketing techniques to have your company on the buzz is to post a couple of
odd articles per week, but this is just ridiculous. Facebook does it,
craigslist does it. This is not news, this is pay per post!

