Jeff Jarvis: "I was in a high-school classroom today, picked up a textbook called Journalism Today, and went looking for all the good stuff about online. Ha! The entirety of the internet was handled in three paragraphs on page 495."

Reminds me... I recently heard Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig say that in grade school on Long Island, they had lessons on how to properly fold/read your NYT on the train [for you inevitable life commuting to the city]. This was in response to him hearing the staggeringly low numbers of people in their 20s or 30s who read a newspaper (on paper). I also recently heard Nicholas Negroponte say that in the rare times when there's a PC in a classroom in a developing country, he often sees the kids being taught Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office? As if the power of the technology is in 'office skills' vs. access to the world's information/market/creativity/power/etc

Comments

[Dervala]

Here in the US, school kids get extensive training on PowerPoint, and almost none on figuring out the authority of different sources on the web. They do their book reports and such with swiped jpgs and cheesy transitions, but still can't write a clear essay or figure out which source is making stuff up.

I'm with Tufte on the notion that PowerPoint makes us dumber. And sad that we're teaching it as the main communication medium in schools.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html