Online in the classroom
- 12 Feb 07, 12:22 PM
Roy Greenslade has picked up on a recent report highlighted by Andrew Grant-Adamson about internet use in US schools. The report by the Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism Education says national and international news websites (and it mentions the BBC as one of the examples) are overtaking TV news and local papers as a means of teaching in the classroom. 
There’s a system of Newspaper-in-Education programmes which for years has been “a vehicle through which US papers provide free or reduced rate copies of their paper for classroom use in order to enhance students’ civic education and encourage them to become lifelong newspaper readers.”
The report says most of the people running the programmes are not fully aware of “the threat the internet poses to their programmes" and warns that a result could ultimately be the weakening of local communities as well as their papers.
Two things struck me about this:
1. If schoolchildren are using the internet to get a wider view of the world and its news that can only be a good thing, and in that context I’m pleased the BBC News website is one of those they are looking at.
2. As far as local news goes, the report seems to underplay the capacity of the web to bring together communities of interest and indeed communities, and the potential this gives to local news organisations. The report says some local papers – the Denver Post, Louisville Courier-Journal and Idaho Press-Tribune – have responded by tailoring elements of what they do online specifically for the classroom. Surely that’s the best of both worlds, local focus along with the convenience, immediacy and interactivity of the web, which schoolchildren are increasingly used to. (We’ve had a go at something similar with a School Report section on this website – designed for use in UK schools).
Shouldn't the Newspaper-in-Education programmes simply be switching their attentions to how they can best use the websites of local newspapers in the classroom? That sounds like a huge opportunity rather than a threat.
Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website
