Who taught me to use the phone?

Despite a report in the Guardian (on 25th March by Polly Curtis) that the draft Rose Report would recommend primary learners should study Twitter and Wikipedia a full text search of the final report and its documenta (published 30th April) finds no reference to either of those words nor to Facebook or social networking.

I'll comment further on the report in the coming weeks but since it's clear that Rose's team sees an expanded role for technology in in the primary curriculum and that the press and opposition politicians will feast on the proposed changes lets think for a moment about social software in the primary school. According to current policy every secondary school should by now have a Virtual Learning Platform (VLE) up and running and plans to have this integrated with e-portfolios for all students across the curriculum by 2010. Primary schools should not be too far behind.

An integrated VLE should deliver the opportunity to Blog, to build a Wiki and for instant messaging as well as an adaptable profiling tool and the capability for each learner to build a set a friends and message them across the institution regardless of yeargroup or subject. By using these tools across the curriculum in appropriate (and multiple) projects over their school life children will learn about social software in a real and useful environment.

Meanwhile children learn much in informal environments that are not school. Real world social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook. Bebo and (for primary) Club Penguin are likely to fall into this category of learning. Whilst we do not in the UK have the sort of comprehensive research as that funded by the MacArthur Foundation in the US Mimi Ito et. al's White Paper - Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project shows just how much informal learning both about and using social software is becoming increasingly peer-based and networked. The curriculum is not intended to compete with this and educationalists might learn something from the structures observed by this team.

Voodoo Histories

To the RSA to hear David Aaronovitch talk about his new book 'Voodoo Histories' on conspiracy theories. In a world of rapidly proliferating information David argues for a 'true scepticism' based on historical knowledge and common sense to counter conspiracy theories. Amongst comments about perceptions of truth and asides about a 'Baudrillardian conspiracy', Matthew Taylor raised the issue of what implication conspiracies had for education.

In Britain, scepticism fits squarely into the ICT curriculum, in particular at Key Stage 3 (and under Jim Rose's proposals KS2) where children should be able to use technology to find and qualify information. My limited experience teaching KS3 tells me that scepticism in the modern or scientific sense is hard to foster. "I found it on google/wikipedia, sir" translates as "It must be right...".

I have more success with scepticism when teaching media where it is possible to consider issues like narrative and history. In media lessons, children learn ICT by stealth - they hardly know they're doing it. Practical application makes it apparent that anything produced comes with a point of view and that objectivity is hard to achieve and not necessarily what's intended. But of course media is not a core subject where ICT is.

ICT should not be the locus for teaching scepticism which should be (David is right) a core competency for a modern teenager and straddle their approach to science, literature, history and living in the real world. Trying to teach it within ICT emphasises the weakness of trying to teach ICT as an isolated subject. Many children do not make the connection between the various subjects they learn nor do they see how technology might both support this or be used to deceive them. We are not using technology effectively for it to be seen as worthwhile for young people and to support critical thinking. Meanwhile, reality media becomes the predominant genre for factual communication.

Of course, the RSA 'Opening Minds' curriculum also has scepticism at the heart of several of its competancy strands but I have not yet had a chance to observe this in action.