Children Who Use Technology are Better Writers
‘Children who blog, text or use social networking websites are more confident about their writing skills, according to the National Literacy Trust.’
Such was the claim of Zoe Kleinman on the BBC News website this week, as it was revealed that the more communicative tools that children used the more confident they were in their ‘core literary skills’.
Coming from a generation who witnessed, first hand, the rise of the great social profiling/ instant messaging/ blogging phenomena, this idea is a hard one to comprehend. It seems difficult to see how writing a message on a friend’s profile equates somehow to a rise in literacy, or how rattling off a text can someone improve one’s communicative skills. Surely a ‘hi, how are you?’ does not impact one’s performance in their GCSE English. But yet, John Coe, general secretary of the National Association for Primary Education, assures ‘It is a form of reading and writing. It might not be conventional but they are communicating, so there is a general gain’.
The statement by Mr Coe, in itself, seems to reflect a desperation of anything to keep children engaged, as ‘general gain’ seems to be given accolade, even though the phrase seems to ring of ‘last resort’. It feels as if Mr Coe speaks as the voice of general concern that children are being lost to technology over the human and personal, as Coe describes how ‘the computer is closer to the child than the teacher by the age of 13’. In an attempt to try and put a positive spin on the modern child’s wilful worship of technology, Coe seems to assure that something positive is coming out of it.
The question then must be asked- how can these forms of communication be seen to have direct impact on literary skills? The most obvious link can be seen in blogging, as this online kind of diary clearly allows a free and open space in which to put one’s feeling and thoughts. But, similarly, these websites can also be used as weapons by the younger age group for gossip and bullying. Instant messaging and text seem even further removed from the idea of academic improvement, as both serve only as a means of chatting amongst friends. To say that either are benefitting children academically would be like saying that when I go out to the pub and talk to my friends I am working towards my degree. Although don’t get me wrong, I would absolutely LOVE this to the case. But this example hopefully demonstrates how absurd this idea is.
At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, it is about time that children of our modern age were sat down and given a good talking to. Coe claims that ‘NAPE was looking into ways in which this passion for texting might be incorporated into teaching methods’, but surely, rather than trying to fit around the needs and wants of the child, authority figures should be able to command the control of the youth of today: The message being ‘put down your mobile phone and pick up that book’. It would be tragic to let a whole generation miss out on the conventional methods of literacy improvement in reading, and if asking them to look away from their computer screens for a few hours seems a demanding task then surely it is not the problem of literacy but the nature of the modern adult/child relationship that must be dealt with.
‘Children who blog, text or use social networking websites are more confident about their writing skills, according to the National Literacy Trust.’
Such was the claim of Zoe Kleinman on the BBC News website this week, as it was revealed that the more communicative tools that children used the more confident they were in their ‘core literary skills’.
Coming from a generation who witnessed, first hand, the rise of the great social profiling/ instant messaging/ blogging phenomena, this idea is a hard one to comprehend. It seems difficult to see how writing a message on a friend’s profile equates somehow to a rise in literacy, or how rattling off a text can someone improve one’s communicative skills. Surely a ‘hi, how are you?’ does not impact one’s performance in their GCSE English. But yet, John Coe, general secretary of the National Association for Primary Education, assures ‘It is a form of reading and writing. It might not be conventional but they are communicating, so there is a general gain’.
The statement by Mr Coe, in itself, seems to reflect a desperation of anything to keep children engaged, as ‘general gain’ seems to be given accolade, even though the phrase seems to ring of ‘last resort’. It feels as if Mr Coe speaks as the voice of general concern that children are being lost to technology over the human and personal, as Coe describes how ‘the computer is closer to the child than the teacher by the age of 13’. In an attempt to try and put a positive spin on the modern child’s wilful worship of technology, Coe seems to assure that something positive is coming out of it.
The question then must be asked- how can these forms of communication be seen to have direct impact on literary skills? The most obvious link can be seen in blogging, as this online kind of diary clearly allows a free and open space in which to put one’s feeling and thoughts. But, similarly, these websites can also be used as weapons by the younger age group for gossip and bullying. Instant messaging and text seem even further removed from the idea of academic improvement, as both serve only as a means of chatting amongst friends. To say that either are benefitting children academically would be like saying that when I go out to the pub and talk to my friends I am working towards my degree. Although don’t get me wrong, I would absolutely LOVE this to the case. But this example hopefully demonstrates how absurd this idea is.
At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, it is about time that children of our modern age were sat down and given a good talking to. Coe claims that ‘NAPE was looking into ways in which this passion for texting might be incorporated into teaching methods’, but surely, rather than trying to fit around the needs and wants of the child, authority figures should be able to command the control of the youth of today: The message being ‘put down your mobile phone and pick up that book’. It would be tragic to let a whole generation miss out on the conventional methods of literacy improvement in reading, and if asking them to look away from their computer screens for a few hours seems a demanding task then surely it is not the problem of literacy but the nature of the modern adult/child relationship that must be dealt with.