ICT in the future - Twitter & Wikipedia?

While browsing education news on the Internet today I came across an article on the New Media Age website which states that Sir Jim Rose has recently completed a report on the use of modern media in the primary schools and will shortly be making recommendations to the government that programs such as 'Twitter' and 'Wikipedia' should be taught to children.

While I agree with Sir Rose that children need to be exposed to the ever developing world of ICT and be given opportunities to work with new innovations such as blogging and podcasting, as the article points out Twitter is not the safest platform out there. It does not have a function for reporting concerns or offensive posts and the company that run the site themselves ask for users to declare that they are over the age of 13 when signing up. With the sad yet real threat of cyber-bullying and internet grooming, where does this fit in with our duty of care as teachers?

Here is a link for the article, it will be interesting to say what Sir Rose actually recommends and what the response from the government, education experts and the public is.

http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/41996/Primary+school+children+to+be+taught+to+use+Twitter.html

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