Someone Finally Gets It

Instead of banning the tools that students will need to become successful in the future, one school has decided to teach them how to use them responsibly.

What a concept!
The London Telegraph reports that a new school curriculum will teach students to use Twitter and other social networking tools productively. Of course, not everyone agrees with the concept to teach the new media. How will teaching students to use the Internet for productivity help them more than teaching them about the Victorian Period of British history? (You'll have to go to the article itself to understand why I'm asking that question.)
Oh, I don't know, let me think about that for awhile . . . .
Okay, done.
Maybe because we're not living in the Victorian Period? Maybe because learning and communicating are rapidly changing, and if we don't keep up, and we don't teach our students to keep up and use the communication and networking skills responsibly, they might as well be living in the Victorian Period?

Disclaimer: I'm not against teaching history. I always taught it when I taught British lit, and I'm using my spring break time to take my nephew to Gettysburg. But we need to concentrate on the future, too, and we're always so slow in the education community to take hold of the future.

Somehow we have to understand that this web 2.0 stuff isn't a fad, isn't a phase in education that will pass. It's the present, and it's the future. It's what we and our students need to know to give us all a positive future.
Even if you're not interested in reading the article in the Telegraph, you can at least enjoy this entertaining video from the article:


Oh, and where did I learn about this article? From Bob Sprankle's Twitter feed!