The twittering classes
It’s been said before and it’ll be said again, but this is definitely the year of Twitter – so much so that government ministers are proposing to make it central to future policy.
Draft plans for the primary school curriculum will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia. It proposes that children will leave school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication.
Although common sense and experience screams that this is a perfect example of jumping on the latest trend, it does highlight that the world of communication is changing.
It also highlights the ever growing importance of communications in the modern world.
If tomorrow’s consumers and service users are going to be relying upon Twitter, blogs, podcasts and Wikipedia as their main sources of information, fluency in these languages is a must.
Although pinpointing the exact expiry date of print is now a time-honoured pastime, its omission from the proposals speaks volumes about the government’s opinion on this issue.
The proposals are the latest indication that the next generation are rapidly growing up in a vastly multi-channeled world where the media, in its broadest sense, is defining and shaping people (through Facebook, twitter, Wikipedia and blogs) in a way, and at a stage in life, that it has never done before.
The writing’s on the Facebook wall, so get up to speed before you need to take lessons from your children.