Wednesday 25 March 2009

Students should learn to Twit, blog and wiki.



Source BBC

Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia and spend less time studying history, it is claimed.


A review of the primary school curriculum in England will be published in a final report next month.

But the Guardian newspaper says draft copies it has seen shows pupils will no longer have to study the Victorian period or the Second World War.

Ministers said British history would always be a core part of education.

The review of the primary school curriculum was commissioned by Schools Secretary Ed Balls last year and is being drawn up by Sir Jim Rose, former chief of England's schools watchdog, Ofsted.

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.

They must gain "fluency" in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spell checker alongside how to spell, the article said.

Comment: why not have UK students improve Wikipedia's entries on WWII and Victoria as class projects?