Could Markdown go to School?

The other day I was complimented, albeit in a jokey way, on the neat organisation of a word document I had produced.

I said nothing, I don’t have a working copy of word on my computer. I do have access, via glow, to the online version but I dislike browser based apps of this sort. I have never been a big fan or power user of word anyway.

My docx was not created with word but with TextMate, written in markdown. & converted with pandoc.

It occurred to me that it is a lot simpler to make a reasonable structured document with markdown than most other applications. Being limited to headings of different levels, paragraphs, lists and a few more formatting features could be seen as a good thing.

Might it be easier, in some alternative universe, for children to learn the basics of creating an organised document before opening word or other software behemoth.

I wrote the above yesterday, in drafts in Markdown. Today I read that Markdown had been added to Onedrive for iPhone.

I knew Onedrive in the browser would display Markdown as my planning for class before I retired was written in Markdown. I could write at home and read in school.

So I had a look in the desktop browser and there is a create Markdown file in the list there too. It opens a basic in-browser editor.

It then occurred to me that maybe you could paste Markdown into word, so I tried that, in the online version of word, and yes you can.

Seems that AI is driving Markdown take up.

So maybe teaching the kids Markdown is not so daft an idea.

I am pretty sure I read that Doug Belshaw taught Markdown as a precursor to html in a kids computer club?

Of course you can paste Markdown into WordPress, I am going to do that now.