Curriculum

UK Students May Learn to Twitter, in School

March 27, 2009 1 min read
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I’ve been getting up to speed on Twitter little by little, learning the lingo and mastering the 140-character format. That’s been the hardest part for a journalist who likes to go in depth and who often surpasses my allotted space for print stories, just ask my editor.

Twitter, texting, and other communication tools may be a bit uncomfortable for us veterans, as far as written venues go. But I tend to think of today’s students as being able to pick up on them more instinctively. So I thought this article was interesting. I found it thanks to the Ed Tech Twitter Group.

The Guardian newspaper got the scoop on the British government’s plans to revise the national curriculum. While some topics in history—like World War II or the Victorian age—would no longer be specified in the requirements, new tech skills would be.

“The proposals would require...children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication.”

Even before the new documents are released they are fueling debate over content in UK schools. I can just imagine the response it will bring from subject-area specialists: Without the content, will students have anything meaningful to blog about?

A version of this news article first appeared in the Digital Education blog.

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