Report suggests adding social media to primary learning
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Independent Minds
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The success of Twitter, blogs and wikipedia have earned them a place in the primary school National Curriculum, according to a leaked review to be published next month.
The review, commissioned by Schools Secretary Ed Balls and written by Sir Jim Rose, reportedly suggests that the government reduces the current 13 standalone subjects to six 'learning areas', one of which could include digital media, including Twitter, blogging and Wikipedia. The teaching of digital media will not, however, be at the expense of conventional subjects, where teachers will, similarly, be allowed to select topics to teach in class
Other suggestions include the suggestion that children should learn to spell-check essays on a computer while also learning to spell in their own handwriting.
Sir Jim Rose, who previously headed up education watchdog Ofsted, is responsible for the report, which is intended to be a "root and branch" examination of the primary education system. His report also suggest that children be able to place historical events within chronological order, understand physical health and well-being and use the calculator less than in the current system.
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Comments
The standard of histroy teaching is so indiffrent now it is becoming a joke.
As a scholar Sir Jim should realise that all he learnt was historical. Unless he wrote all the books himself.
I have recently been helping my teenager prepare for her gcse's and when I looked at the test paper I was appalled at what they were being taught. Nothing about the english civil war where the foundation stones of our present parliment was formed, nothing at all about the great war and the depression that follow or the social chaos and problems associated with losing a whole generation.
There was two questions on WW2. Thinnking my daughter was uop to speed as she had a lesson that day about it ,I asked he for summary of the events.
Well it started cause a bloke called kiaser or somthink killed another bloke and that started the war. I questioned her further and asked if she was confused about which war we were disscusing and this came next archduke ferdinand got killed and they invaded france or somewhere and it finished in 1945.
I spent the whole evening explaining to her that there where two wars seperaated by 21 years and asked if she knew anything about WW2.
As you can guess I was at the so called local college the next day and tackled the history teacher about my daughters lack of history.I asked her to give me one example of a like between the Battle of Waterloo and the Second World War. She looked at me in blank amazement. I asked if they taught anything on the following items. The English Civil War, The Great fire of London the First World War, the great depression or any other major event in our countries past. It is not part of the ciriculum she stated. Finally I asked if they covered the Magna Carta. NO.
I am a firm believer that if you don't study history you make the same mistakes all over again.
If we had not recorded the events that happend in the past we would not of learnt about the atrocities that the humam race can inflict on each other.
History is as important as Maths .English and Sciences.
If our government looked back into the past records we would not be in the state we are in now. All the warning signs are there they just chose to ingnore it.
So Sir Jim I suggest you keep your idictic comments to yourself. A computer will never be better than the human brain that connstructed it.
Lets go back to a time before computers and caalculators . The all need electicity to run but the brain uses it's on power source.
IF (god forbid ) there is another war the computers etc will be disable in a millisecond and what are you left with? the human brain.
Did you miss this quote?
Perfectly reasonable to expect students and teachers alike to be able to harness the power of internet tools. To be blunt, knowing history will not prepare you for the work place. Knowing how to use modern and emerging technologies certainly will. I'm very happy to see that the government is understanding the importance of web 2.0 tools, and their place in the education system.
But, hey, gotta keep chasing da yoof.
If all they're intersted in is text-messaging and Facebook, let's make it part of the curriculum !
2nd World War? Nah, far too boring for their tiny minds and nanosecond attention spans.
The rest of the civilsed world must be peeing itself laughing at us.
According to spell-check , I have all these words correctly spelt (apparently, spelled) .
Am I missing something ? Or was Baldrick on the review board ?
# Morning: Twitter
# Break
# Mid-Morning: How we won the glorious Iraq War
# LUNCH
# Ten-Minute Hate - the President of Iran
# Our friends and benefactors, the Americans, who gave us everything we have
# Afternoon break
# Activities: today we make an American Apple Pie.
# Hometime: we all sing THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER and kiss the portait of Senator McCarthy as we leave the school.
Without knowledge of digital media, how would I order school stationery or make parent -teacher appointments? How would I make bookings for my children to attend events. I expect school notices and calendars to be available on the internet.Similarly I expect my children to be able to access information they need on the internet. In other words, children need to be computer literate to function in modern life.
I do have some criticisms. I was, for example, unimpressed when my daughter was marked down for using an authoritative book instead of "the internet" for a research project, but that was one teacher's opinion; another teacher might have recognised the authority of the source she used over wikipedia.
Of COURSE computer skills are more relevant and necessary these days - and by default, they should be used in all subjects that they can be useful for - but the point is, kids ALREADY know how to use computers.
Kids already know how to use a spellcheck, and if they don't, it takes a couple of minutes to teach them. It's not worth even mentioning as part of a 'curriculum'. And as for blogging...yes, well done Sir Jim rose, I see some advisor has mentioned this new fangled interweb thing to you, and you think it's important - it's not. Most blogs aren't read on the internet.
Teach people how to write in general, not how to set up a blog on the internet that no one's ever going to read.
As for learning how to use wikipedia...I know it must all be above Sir Jim Rose's head (after all, he's still pressing the dvd drive eject button in an attempt to turn his computer on), but most of us kind of taught ourselves how to type the subject matter into a search box, and press enter. Can I get a back dated Wikipedia GCSE because of this?