January 17, 2008
The University of Google
Tara Brabazon, professor of media studies at Britain’s University of Brighton, was expected Wednesday to criticize Google and what she sees as students’ over-reliance on the search engine and Wikipedia in an inaugural lecture at the university. She calls the trend “The University of Google,” according to an article Monday in The Times, and labels the search engine “white bread for the mind.” The professor bans her own students from using Wikipedia and Google in their first year of study.
A columnist for the paper responded in a piece that accuses Ms. Brabazon of snobbery. “Curiosity, it seems, can only be stimulated by trawling library shelves or by shelling out substantial amounts of money,” he writes, sarcastically.—-Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Thursday January 17, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Live Chat Transcript: Outsourcing E-Mail
Next: Turning Cellphones Into Health Aids With Microsoft Money
Very interesting. I understand Brabazon’s point about students’ over-reliance on Google and Wikipedia, but I don’t know if banning those web sites helps to improve students’ information literacy. I think students need to know how to use these kinds of web sites wisely.
If I can make a plug here, our teaching center just started a new podcast series featuring interviews with faculty about issues of teaching and learning. The first episode, available here, features an interview with a history professor who uses Wikipedia to teach the undergraduate history majors in his class how to think like historians. He’s a great teacher and interviewee, and I think he offers an effective way to use Wikipedia to help him accomplish his course goals.
— Derek Jan 17, 01:22 PM #
I agree with Derek – banning search engines and wikis is not a realistic answer. Training students to become critical readers is more helpful.
— Bill Sodeman Jan 17, 05:08 PM #
The best stuff is not yet on the net. So Googling a topic guarantees missing its best renditions. There are exceptions, mostly related to software itself.
No one who has tried to pay for an academic journal or keep awake while reading the title of any of its articles, can offer them as a reasonable “access” substitute for information to Google.
The world is transitioning into electronic digital form, just as theories of everything are, by the likes of Wolfram, making the same transition.
Critical reading has a counterpart called criticial searching—that uses the mind to make the shallowness of Google uncover what few pockets of non-drivel are there in digital form, except mostly for software topics.
Rather than banning the present for the sake of a teacher incompetent at the future—demonstrating the opposite of “knowledgable” ways of living—we might introduce the theory of “mind extensions” from primatology, anthropology, situated cognition to students, showing how their intelligence is determined by the quality of their personal professional library, personal file system, and network of friends who can perform cognitive functions for them. If we graded and educated these mind extensions instead of blindly and foolishly concentrating on brain training out of antequated images in our own careers, students would find a “reason” to have a great personal library and file system and network of cognitive friends, that is, ones beyond mere Google and Wiki.
— Richard Tabor Greene Jan 18, 01:05 AM #
THANK GOO FOR GOOGLE
I don’t know that banning students (or anyone else for that matter) from using Google or Wikipedia amounts to serving them in any manner. Any piece of information we search for and find out about is a good place to begin. Eventually, it will be important, as the point has been made above, to train students to perform effective search strategies and also to become critical readers. There is no dearth of information on these two points in Google and other search engines. Water is there, but whether or not your horse wishes to drink is up to you . I say thank God for Google on this account.
In professor Tara Brabazon’s decision to outlaw Google and Wikipedia is a message which says that scholarly knowledge can only come from the mouths of scholarly journal authors and the like. Academic research, rigorous as it may be, addresses itself solely to the academic community, and its chances of percolating down to the average reader is very slim. Nowadays, I believe scholars need to devise new styles to address a different public, a public of millenials and a fellowship of web 2.0. Otherwise, what is likely to happen is a widening gap between the community of ‘scholars’ and the next generation of scholars. What this might amount to in practice is possibly a redesigning of the readability charts, in the direction of an instrument that is cognizant of unfolding developments at the level of cognition, communication and information.
Just so I don’t forget about Wikipedia, banning use of such a repository of knowledge is tantamount to asking students and readers to reinvent the wheel. If Wikipedia is the sum-total of what regular men and women have been able to hone so far in a manner that ‘vulgarizes’ information (to use a vulgar term), it’s not clear to me why anyone would want to take it off of learners’ electronic shelves. This is all the more so as the flipping encyclopeadia is open for editing by anyone that cares to edit it. Rather than telling the average person that knowledge is there, and all you can do is receive it, Wikipedia is sending a strong, empowering signal, that you too can participate in knowledge making with ample benefit from the views and experiences of anyone else.
I am led to believing that the whole point of knowledge making in the new age is to train people to search for information, evaluate it, rewrite it, publish it, add a personal touch to it, and take advantage of feedback from whoever cares to give feedback.
— Raddaoui Jan 18, 05:15 AM #
Here’s how scholarly students in Tara Brabazon’s can use Wikipedia and Google without Professor Brabazon ever knowing —- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#FacultySearch
— Robert E. Jensen Jan 18, 09:04 AM #
Ha ha ha, like it’s possible to ban students from using Google. After all, you source the study you find, not the search engine that led you there.
— Josh Jan 18, 01:15 PM #
I blogged about this in comic strip form earlier this week, if you’re interested:
http://shelfcheck.blogspot.com/2008/01/shelf-check-178.html
http://shelfcheck.blogspot.com/2008/01/shelf-check-179.html
(I just posted this comment at a blog that pointed here; I’ll leave it here, too) :My main feeling is that banning isn’t the answer (she banned Google—but what about Dogpile, Blackle, Yahoo—where does it end? what does it accomplish, aside from symbolism and publicity?), requiring deeper research is. So: require stuff like Academic Search Premier; require students to learn advanced search operators when using search engines (and record what they typed in the search box)...interestingly, there’s a Wikipedia entry on Tara Brabazon, the professor in question (I didn’t look closely enough to determine if it just sprang up after this story broke)—it looks like she has quite a few well-thought-out, academic credits…so why ban Google and Wikipedia, so obviously a not-well-thought-out (again, Dogpile, Blackle, etc) action?
— Emily Lloyd Jan 18, 05:18 PM #
I believe google is an awesome resource and have not problems letting students use it; as long as the filters are on. Most schools have great policies on what is allowed and one of which is Google. However as the previous statment mentions Wikipedia well it’s not so much of a resource but never ending opinion and random fact webcite.
— sara ghorbanian Jan 18, 07:36 PM #
I believe there are many different ways to learn. Google for me is a search engine to which many posibilities await new beginings. However, students now and of the future must learn that they CAN NOT put www.google.com as a cite on their works cited page. Students must also learn what turtiary evedence vs. the real evedence is and how to distinguish between them. (Art, Costume History, etc.) When students choose to accomplish both those things, then they are learning. They are learning how to use the system, and their subjects to which they are searching.
I choose not to use google if I can help it because there is just so much to look at when typing up a searching topic. I like other search engines because they narrow down the act of searching a bit more for my attention span.
My sister is currently obtaining her Library Science degree. She stated that Wikipedia is a bad sorce for encyclopedia engines because a searcher can change the definition and save it on site. Turtiary???? I may use wikipedia for a source, but I also try to use a hard copy.
I tend to let my art students have book references as well as a few web references when they research something. It is good for them to be able to practice documentation laws. I suggest other search engines rather than google, but if my students prefer google, I don’t stop them, until they almost become frustrated. I want them to also come up with other encyclopidia and dictionary search engines combined with Wikipedia to further document their paper or PPT presentations. I don’t think I have enough evidence to ban my students from these web sources yet. After all…I am still learning too.
— rosanne harrott Jan 21, 05:15 PM #
I agree that there is an over-reliance on search engines but I do not think that students should be banned from using them. I think that students would be better served if they were taught how to use search engines as a tool and resource for obtaining information. Just as we teach young children how to use the library search tool, they also need to be taught how to use the internet.
— Marissa R. Jan 24, 08:46 PM #
I believe that google is a great resource for society these days. With the way technology has advance, google is almost necessary, it would be illogical to ban people from using it.
— Leopoldo Molina Feb 11, 09:11 PM #
Banning Google would be equivalent to banning electronic book and journal searches and requiring use of a card catalog. As far as Wikipedia, I agree that it often has inaccurate or unsubstantiated information. However, it’s often very useful as a starting point when learning about a new topic. I completely disagree that it stifiles curiousity. If anything, I’ve found myself much more willing to investigate an unfamiliar topic. Students need to be taught how to read critically.
— Robert Lynch Feb 21, 12:15 PM #