Skip to main content

Teaching technology

The Scottish Government has announced plans to teach children about blogging and podcasting, as part of the Curriculum for Excellence. I'm particularly impressed they'll be teaching when text speak is appropriate, and when it isn't - it's hard to project yourself as educated or professional when it appears someone's been stealing half your vowels. But you'll only know that if someone teaches you!

The whole plan sounds pretty good to me - I seem to be one of the 'assumed' generation. It was assumed when I arrived at that Uni I'd know how to touch / speed type (I don't, I fumble with a few fingers, while staring fixedly at the keyboard. I'm awaiting the development of RSI.), and word process (I didn't do secretarial studies at school, so that passed me by)...then it was assumed I'd know how to use email...and the internet...assess the relevancy and accuracy of the sites I found on the internet....then finding and using blogs, RSS feeds, wikis...

Everything I know, I've taught myself, by hearing about it somehow, then digging for more information, trying things out, and making lots of mistakes along the way. It's been assumed all along that I would just know things, when the reality is, I've had to fight to get that knowledge. And now, I have to teach others, based on my (admittedly) imperfect skills.

Just think of the time these kids can save by having someone real, in front of them, to ask all sorts of questions that they'd otherwise have to accept not knowing the answer to, or would have to waste precious time looking for the answers. And then assessing the trustworthiness of where they got that answer.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What's in a name?

In the case of this blog, it's a name that had no particular thought or planning behind it - I had no idea whether I would actually want to keep it going, what I would blog about, or that anyone would ever read it. Well, it's almost 4 years later (17th June 2007 is blog birthday, if we're counting), and the blog's still here, so I think we can now safely assume that it's probably going to be sticking around. And the name's been getting on my nerves a bit...you have no idea the amount of people who have found this blog looking for ladies called Jennie Law or Jenny Law. Personally, I'm not actually called Jennie Law, so I'm no help to these poor searchers, although for the right fee I could maybe consider pretending to be... I also don't blog a huge amount about law: I'm not a lawyer, I just have the job of finding stuff for lawyers. Sometimes that process amuses me, sometimes it annoys me, and I blog about it. Sometimes I write about library is

The mysteries of cataloguing

Cataloguing: an arcane art, where each piece of punctuation is significant, and commas and semi colons are all-powerful. Well, they are in "proper" libraries, where in-depth research of esoteric points goes on, and the precise spelling of Christian names, and information such as when a person lived and died can be crucial in pinpointing obscure facts. Here, we have our own catalogue system. It doesn't have a name, but if it did, it would probably be something along the lines of "I need this book NOW, no I don't care about the precise spelling of the authors middle name, or their date of birth." I know, I know, it's not snappy, but it's accurate. Cataloguing demands are different in a commercial law firm: we don't care about much more than what it's about, who wrote, when, and what jurisdiction it covers. And what we really, really care about is "where the hell is it". Law books are amazing: they have the power to move themselves f

UK librarian blogs - the list so far

I’ve pulled the previous entries into one alphabetical list, with a few categories. Will be back later with more detailed discussion of what I’ve learned by doing this. And, as always, if you know of other librarian blogs, let me know and I’ll add them in! Institutional Library Blogs / Professional Group Blogs aRKive Appears to be the blog of the Reid Kerr College library, or someone related to the Library, but unable to confirm as it doesn’t have any ‘about’ section that I can find. Lots of posts about library topics, books, IT… Brit Lib Blogs Google Group There’s a Google Group for British librarian bloggers! Unfortunately it looks to be pretty much unused at the moment. CILIP Blogs CILIP has various blogs by either staff, or links to relevant blogs, available from the Communities section. Varying levels of activity on these blogs – the PTEG blog has one post from November 2007, while Lyndsay’s CILIP Blog has been going has been going for almost a year, with at le