Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Brabazon googles (not)

University of Brighton academic Tara Brabazon seems to be getting a lot of coverage for her "anti Google" stance, which she's been writing about for some time. There is an article in Times online, quoting some of her views (she's giving an inaugural lecture), which had 38 comments at time of writing:
Frean, A. (2008) "White bread for young minds, says university professor." Times, 14 January. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/
tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article3182091.ece


Obviously I'm not going to disagree with the idea that students should be encouraged to be more information literate! Banning students from using Google and Wikipedia in their first year (as she's quoted as doing) seems a bit odd to me, though, as I would rather support students in understanding how to discriminate between sources of information. She could probably have made a nice case study out of what she actually said and what was reported in the media and what comments people made (e.g. perhaps my report here is moving even further away from what she meant...), had her students been allowed to use it.....

Photo by Sheila Webber: Greenwich Park, December 2007.

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