Re: Google is “white bread for the mind"

 
  Just noticed a reaction from a Times columnist:
   
  http://www.timesonline.co
.uk/tol/comment/columnists/magnus_linklater/article3193083.e
ce
   
  Bernie Sloan

Dan Lester <danriverofdata.com> wrote:
  And just how does she propose to keep them from using
these tools?

She'll magically keep them from using WP and then following
links from
it to other sources?

She'll magically keep them from using Google? So is Yahoo
ok?

And this is a professor of MEDIA STUDIES? So they're going
to avoid
key tools in a key medium?

And she says:
"But students do not know how to tell if they come from
serious, refereed work
or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing
and
fleeting commitments."

And she's not going to TEACH them how to determine what is
good, bad
or indifferent? Does she teach that regarding
"traditional sources"?

What is totally off base here is her ideas, and just as
strange is
that this made THE Times. (Not just the NY Times, but THE
Times)

dan


Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 7:45:58 AM, you wrote:

> "Google is 'white bread for the mind', and the
internet is producing a generation of
> students who survive on a diet of unreliable
information, a professor of media studies
> will claim this week...Her own students are banned from
using Wikipedia or Google as
> research tools in their first year of study".
> 
> Full text:
> 
> 
> http://technology.timesonlin
e.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article3182091.ece





-- 
The road goes on forever and the party never ends. REK, Jr.

Dan Lester, Boise, ID 




       
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This piece and appended comments confirm what I was
suspicious of:

She's pushing her own books, at least indirectly.  Her
(undoubtedly
self-written, though that's not a criticism necessarily)
entry in the
evil Wikipedia at http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_Brabazon has
reference to herself as a "digital dissenter". 
Nevertheless, she
teaches courses via distance education (my heavens, maybe
using the
internet and its tools??), and a course on "Learning
and Writing
through Popular Culture".  I would hope that the
internet and its good
and bad points is a significant part of that course.

Despite the above, her books (eight so far) are prominently
mentioned
in the Wikipedia piece.  I wonder if we can assume it is all
accurate?
I will give her credit for NOT linking the titles directly
to Amazon
or B&N.  In addition to a book forthcoming, she cites
her latest:
The University of Google: education in the (post)
information age.

The piece in the Times sounds like a bit of marketing for
it.

One other bit of info that I noted is that "She is also
Director of the
Popular Culture Collective, a not for profit community
organization that
aims to improve the quality of popular culture.

Somehow that goal seems, to me at least, to be an oxymoron. 
Of course
if banned punk and rap and romance novels and porn and
People Magazine
and only allowed high quality authors to be published and
music to be
played.....

dan

Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 10:27:19 AM, you wrote:

>  
>   Just noticed a reaction from a Times columnist:
>    
>  
> http://www.timesonline.co
.uk/tol/comment/columnists/magnus_linklater/article3193083.e
ce


-- 
The road goes on forever and the party never ends. REK, Jr.

Dan Lester, Boise, ID  


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