Young, gifted and digital

Hannah

My digital daughters tell me that a third of young people online have their own blog or website. They showed me this in the Guardian on Friday. Blogging is described as one example of the way in which “the digital revolution is sweeping all before it”. Wary of a digital divide, the leader concludes that there is “an imperative need to put the maximum resources we can into education and providing the next generation with the skills they will need to keep a place in the van of the digital revolution. Judging by what our youngsters are up to they won't need much encouraging.”

More detail of the Guardian/ICM survey is here. This shows how the young live in a world in which communication is enhanced and shaped by social software. But yet our professional motivation to recognize and incorporate these skills seems sadly lacking. I refer back to Dan Buckley’s blog debate on the educational value of blogging launched in popular teachers’ weekly the TES (which describes itself as the world’s leading education newspaper, with average weekly sales of 121,000). What debate? Just the 3 of us, and I think we agree.