10:34:00 pm
"Don't teach your kids coding," says New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman. "Well – teach it if you want. But before you teach them coding, teach them digital civics: how to talk to one another on the internet, how to understand fact from fiction."
The internet is a sewer "of untreated, unfiltered information," he told his audience of teachers and international education leaders at a conference in Dubai on the weekend, "and if we don't build the values filters so our children can interact in this environment, with real values ... we have a real problem.
"Friedman identified a problem that education systems are only now beginning to wrestle with. Life is largely lived online, and schools do not prepare children for it.
It's not just about keeping them safe from predators, cyberbullies, porn and identity theft: it's also about having an ethical framework, and the skills to assess the reliability of information.
"These children are the first generation born and raised in a digital world, and they need to learn digital skills for the future," said Yuhyun Park, a Korean digital education researcher who was in the audience.
"But they are often ... left alone to navigate the negative side effects of technology."
No comments
Post a Comment