Week in Review: Kids twittering

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Once again Twitter was the focus of attention as plans were revealed that showed web and new media skills could be taught alongside handwriting and literacy.

It was argued that although this technology was already a part of students’ lives, teaching it in the classroom could help them use it intelligently – as well as make lessons more exciting.

Our news and features editor was firm that learning new web tools was entirely compatible with more traditional academic work.

Others say we should be focusing attention and investment on science and technology, and that children would adopt these tools anyway as part of their social development.

This week, Twitter finally made a firm move towards monetising itself by offering expanded services for its business customers, while Gartner revealed the ways enterprises had already joined the microblogging bandwagon.

The use of new media in schools and businesses can really only work if we have decent connections, and BT this week revealed the first locations that would receive super-fast broadband connections.

It’ll be early next year when we see areas in cities like London, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh with high-speed connections, and is all part of the BT’s scheme to build national fibre-optic broadband services. It also helps the government’s grand aim of digitising Britain.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, competitors Virgin Media decided to put its own hat in the ring by claiming that it would have much faster upstream and downstream speeds than BT when it meets its suggested timeframe of 2012.

However, as our reporter discovered, Virgin Media were just talking about the capabilities for its network, which can already go to speeds of up to 200Mbps. The market doesn’t seem to be quite there yet for speeds this fast.

We also received welcome feedback about the Internet Explorer 8. IT PRO reviewed it well, but it turns out that a lot of readers weren’t exactly positive about it, which shows that Microsoft have some work to win the hearts and minds of users who have moved on to other browsers.

It was also an interesting week for Dell with its new servers, while Facebook snooping caused uproar.

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