Professor Bans Google & Wikipedia In Class Room

Lecturer bans students from using Google and Wikipedia from The Argus reports that Professor Tara Brabazon from the University of Brighton has banned the use of Google and Wikipedia in her classroom.

She said using Google and Wikipedia doesn’t encourage students to use their “own brains” enough. She added:

I want students to sit down and read. It’s not the same when you read it online. I want them to experience the pages and the print as much as the digitisation and the pixels. Both are fine but I want them to have both, not one or the other, not a cheap solution.

In fact, she is giving a lecture on her opinion of Google in the classroom. She named the lecture “Google Is White Bread For The Mind.” You can hear it for yourself at the University of Brighton at the Sallis Benney Theatre in Grand Parade, Brighton, on Wednesday at 6.30 pm.

I know many librarians have issues with some of the information found on Google or Wikipedia due to many inaccuracies and lack of citations. But this argument is not present in the report at The Argus.

Yes, I personally believe that one should be educated in how to use libraries and other sources for research.

But this reminds me of a time I submitted a printed graph in high school. I was the only one to use Microsoft Excel to plot my graphs. I thought I did an awesome job but my teacher failed me for handing in a computer-generated graph. She said, “If you don’t do it by hand, you don’t know how to plot a graph.” I know the two cases are different, but this still reminded me of that science teacher.

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Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.