UK Government seems to recognize that learners work differently

Although we hear more about the US education system, it seems that the UK government is building policy that recognizes that children learn using different mediums and in different ways.

Here is an interesting article about how UK proposes to teach children how to Twitter, use Wikipedia, and how to blog as a learning process. All that in primary schools.

Have a look at:

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/03/25/please-sir-how-do-you-re-tweet-twitter-to-be-taught-in-uk-primary-schools/

Once such collaboration is taught at primary schools it will rapidly change how an entire generation learns.

Blogs & Wikis for Learning — a few resources…

, Sharing. Collaboration. Community. Expression. These are all buzz words which dominate the 'learning' scene these days.

Blogs and wikis are essentially similar since they allow you to concentrate on creating content by letting you quickly create or update a website without the hassle of learning the technology or the programming which makes it possible. While a blog is, almost always, a tool of personal expression, a wiki is a more collective expression of information.

The Google For Educators page summarizes several real-world applications of these learning tools:

1. They make "it easy for teachers and students to share work, class notes, and pictures online."
2. From a teacher's perspective blogs and wikis lets one " stay connected to your students, their parents, and the rest of the school…", and perform several functions like "updating parents about their children's progress" and keeping "them posted on upcoming events; publishing a class or school newsletter; sharing photos and student work; posting course documents, projects and results;…" et al.
3. A teacher could also use a blog to "…assign collaborative group projects online with an easy way to track students’ progress…"
4. Among a host of other things, students can use blogs and wikis to:
1. "…Communicate ideas, photos and class notes…"
2. "…Create hubs for collecting information for both long and short-term projects…"
3. "…Store information as unpublished drafts…"
4. "…Collect feedback on their work from classmates, teachers and parents…:
5. Participate in "…collaborative projects where multiple students can work and comment…"

A few good resources mentioned in the same place has a number of resources which make for very interesting reading:

• The Teaching Today tips section
  
• The eMINTS section about blogs and wikis
• Examples of how blogs are being used for learning on my-ecoach.com