Yacapaca

Ruth Kelly, it would seem, is trying to cultivate the ‘hard bastard’ image that did so well for David Blunkett until his libido got the better of his career. Today she’s taking a pop a low-level disruption in the classroom ahead of Ofsted’s annual report due out tomorrow. Reading between the lines of the BBC’s report, her radical plan boils down to more sin bins.

I would have preferred it had she instead promoted the more rounded approach of Chalkface author Anthony Grunwell. He promotes a student-centred whole school approach, that encourages students and staff to examine their own behaviour and its effects on others.

By a curious coincidence, we have his book Improving Behaviour In and Out of the Classroom on half-price special this month.

I went through school believing that knowledge was something that came exclusively from outside my personal universe. It came in textbooks and it came in encyclopaedias. It certainly did not come from me or anyone I knew*.

That’s a poisonously disempowering distortion of reality. As an antidote, I recommend Wikipedia. Sixth form students, in particular, can and should be establishing their netizenship by actively contributing to it, not just researching from it.

The value of Wikipedia has been hotly debated ever since Robert McHenry (from the very threatened Encyclopaedia Britannica camp) labelled it “The Faith-Based Encyclopedia“, sparking a right old ding-dong in the pages of Corante, that’s still going on.

For most of us reading that debate the problem is that we don’t really understand how it works. Or even why it works, and why it doesn’t simply fall apart under the onslaught from all the sixth-formers I’m inciting to edit it.

This lovely Flash move from Jon Udell provides a superb exposition. If you have any interest in Wikipedia, I strongly suggest you spend the next ten minutes watching (and listening to) Jon’s explanation.

*Postscript: only after I’d left school did it sink in that my dad was (and still is) the expert on the vernacular architecture of the North Yorks Moors. Shame there are no A-Levels in that.

Most kids are now taught print-media literacy as part of the English curriculum. They can, for example, distinguish between editorial, advertorial and advert.

But what about on the internet, a medium far more important to most school students? This Pew Report and associated Wired article (thanks Stephen for the reference) suggests that very few people can actually distinguish between paid and unpaid (i.e. advertising) listings in a search engine.

So here’s my challenge: how many of your students can recognise the following, and understand the way in which someone is trying to influence them?

• Paid vs. unpaid listings in search engines
• Pop-up pages
• Pop-under pages
• 419-scam email (the infamous Nigerian con)
• Affiliate links (if you buy the linked/recommended product, the referrer gets a commission)
• Traded links (the website owner was paid to put the link there)