HooliganUK;

Short form communication is everywhere. Tools, software and websites continue to employ similar features that many of us are familiar with; short status updates (micro-blogs, snippet text) not to mention the increased usage of text messaging. The bottom-line is short-form communication is going anywhere, in fact it’s only becoming more prevalent in everything, everywhere. So in addition to learning how to write and consume long-form, my point is, we should teach kids how to effectively communicate in short-form (but let me clarify, I’m not advocating to teach kids abbreviations things like OMG or WTF).

For example, ask anyone who has used Twitter effectively for at least a few weeks or a month. The on-going challenge of communicating succinctly in under 140 characters is a tough task. But, after repetition, many agree this exercise helps them with other forms of communication like emails and face-to-face conversation. In my opinion, consuming information online forces us to increase our quality of thought. We’ve formed daily routines (Google’ing) and adapted how we find information. I’m able to provide shorter, quicker, succinct communication (whatever it may be; phone conversations, emails, presentations, casual conversation). However — basic skills like listening CAN’T be lost at the expense of adapting to new technologies.

You should take a look at an article published in the New York Times that discusses this topic in a positive light; technology makes people view the world as engineers; every problem can be solved if you have the right tools, enough time and you pose the right questions:

“Technology Doesn’t Dumb Us Down. It Frees Our Minds.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/technology/21...

Also, this was just published in the Guardian this week…
Google is supposedly "making us stupid" and shattering our concentration into the bargain. It's also allegedly leading to an epidemic of plagiarism. File sharing is destroying music, online news is killing newspapers, and Amazon is killing bookshops. The network is making a mockery of legal injunctions and the web is full of lies, distortions and half-truths. Social networking fuels the growth of vindictive "flash mobs" which ambush innocent columnists such as Jan Moir. And so on. All of which might lead a detached observer to ask: if the internet is such a disaster, how come 27% of the world's population (or about 1.8 billion people) use it happily every day, while billions more are desperate to get access to it?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/2...

Ramsey, you do not have children. The last thing I want is my children learning to abbreviate the English language before they can even command it. As for creative essay writing, what would we do without the next generation of Shakespeare, Lennon & McCartney, Harper Lee, Ann Rand etc. Social Media has a place, but I do not want my Grade School kids abbreviating their lives to me at the dinner table or through a text. As for internet language like flaming and flambait, I would like my children to first understand what a noun is, a pronoun, an adverb, how to construct a sentence is.

I am not knocking the idea, I just want children to be really smart before we dumb them down!

As a test, can you successfully tweet this to me, or convey the sentiment of this World War One Poem in a text?

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

I completely agree! Working mostly with higher education institutions I have been trying to convince faculty here that we need to teach students how to use those same online/social tool to communicate.

We spend so much time and effort in trying to perfect that 5-page term paper to convey an argument but we never think to teach students about using an online medium to share the same idea.

I think education is headed in the same direction newspapers were in the late 90s and 00s. They kept "online" reporters and editors separate from the traditional newsroom. Bloggers, online video producers and the lot were not on the same playing field.

Finally some news orgs are stepping up and realizing the potential of teaching their own reporters how to use a FlipCam or Twitter to report news...

I agree that students of all ages should be taught online privacy and communication techniques. In addition to privacy, students should also be taught about online safety.

Some schools, whether in elementary school or a university, students are being taught communication techniques but I have not yet heard of students being taught online privacy and intellectual property outside of journalism schools.