Social Networking Curriculum

I just read a very interesting article entitled, "Digital Debate: Prepare Kids for Exams or Life" on eSchoool News. It got me thinking: Have you ever seen an effective curriculum that teaches students how to develop social networks. I don't mean telling kids about different social network sites. I do mean telling students how to interact intelligently once they get to the sites. I'm not sure if it matters if the sites are physical or virtual.

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Britt Gow on September 25, 2008 at 5:28am

No Andrew, I haven't seen any effective curriculum for social networking, although I believe our students discuss the etiquette of blogs, wikis and nings. Even the Year 12 students do waste time and 'cyberspace' with meaningless trivia as they become familiar with the tool. When given a purpose and some guidelines they mostly act responsibly.

The article was interesting and as a science and maths teacher, I have been pondering this very thing. A lot of what I am supposed to teach is very content-based (structure of the cell, how light behaves, properties of mixtures etc.) and much accumulated knowledge is available at the touch of a button. Memorizing the first 20 elements of the periodic table probably isn't as important as it once was, now that anyone can look up the tables in an instant. I think that to achieve real understanding students still need to do the hands-on practical activites in science, but they also need to be critical of their sources of information and know how to discriminate between reliable and phoney articles.
How true it is that there are almost no occasions in real life where you are asked to answer complex questions and solve problems without the time and opportunity for research? Well, I can't think of any.
Sorry for rambling, but a very interesting topic.