[Google's] White bread for young minds, says university professor

London Times ^ | January 14, 2008 | Alexandra Frean, Education Editor

[Aristotelian]

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.

In her inaugural lecture at the University of Brighton, Tara Brabazon will urge teachers at all levels of the education system to equip students with the skills they need to interpret and sift through information gleaned from the internet.

She believes that easy access to information has dulled students’ sense of curiosity and is stifling debate. She claims that many undergraduates arrive at university unable to discriminate between anecdotal and unsubstantiated material posted on the internet.

“I call this type of education ‘the University of Google’.

“Google offers easy answers to difficult questions. 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.

[OCCASparky]

To claim the Internet is producing dullards is nonsense.

I don't think she's claiming the Internet per se is what's creating intellectually or academically lazy students.

Google is a tool, albeit a left-leaning one. Kids just hit the first link that pops up in their search and accept is as gospel. How is that beneficial to scholastic endeavor?

It's the same type of people who constantly rely on Wikipedia as the Holy Grail of information. These folks are usually the easiest to defeat in online debate and message boards simply because they haven't thought past what "da Wiki" told them. Thankfully colleges are starting to wake up to this and refuse to accept students' work which cites Wikipedia and other similar sites.

[Right Wing Assault]

first words on the telegraph by Samuel Morse

Ah, the evil telegraph. The information that comes across it is white bread for the mind.

[ThomasThomas]

I found this with “white bread”

{Common trappings of the whitebread lifestyle include golf, Kenny G and Enya CDs, SUVs, an irrational fixation on lawn care, Golden Retrievers,...}

[Right Wing Assault]

Good one!

[Intolerant in NJ]

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...As opposed to previous generations which grew up on a diet of unreliable information fed them by college professors and media types like Jason Blair and whatisname Duranty......

[BreezyDog]

Dinosaur media biting back with that article. Expediting its death I suppose. If it wasn't for the internet I would have never read this article.

Man talk about getting bad and unreliable information. This piece is a perfect example of that.

[truemiester]

Of course he is against it.

The University of Google has no tenure.

[Centurion2000]

In her inaugural lecture at the University of Brighton, Tara Brabazon will urge teachers at all levels of the education system to equip students with the skills they need to interpret and sift through information gleaned from the internet

Get all the kids able to count and identify change / bills back to me when I shop. Then worry about google.

[radiohead]

schools have often just given up trying to actively prevent wholesale plaguerism in homework assignments.

Not really. I'm a prof and a frequent visitor to an academic web site. Plagiarism is an oft-repeated topic and professors aren't afraid to give students an 'F' and send them to an academic review board. Professors can also use programs such as 'Turnitin' (turnitin.com) that search for plagiarized material. My university has a license for this product and students can be required to submit their papers into the program.

It seems that many students 1)were never taught proper citation in high school. They just don't know how to show the difference between their thoughts and someone else's. 2) Think that profs live in the classroom and don't know anything about the internet, searching, etc. and 3)Are so stupid that some of them have even plagiarized their own professor's work and didn't think they'd be caught!

I also think that there is an assumption that kids know how to do everything online and it really isn't true. They may be expert users, but they aren't really skilled in it, such as in determining authentic info on the web, etc.

I'm fortunate to teach on the graduate level and in a discipline where the students are well-read and write well. Though I warn about it in my syllabus (automatic 'F' and a report to the Dean), plagiarism isn't a problem for me.

[dr_lew]

They used to worry about calculators. From a technical perspective, Google and the web pages it gives instant access to are nothing short of manna from heaven. I have seen very little to fault the information I find when I get curious about some topic. A lot of the more advanced stuff is held “close to the vest” so you can’t find everything there is to know, but it’s moved accessibility to a new plateau. My grad school professor used to tell us never to accept anything we read in a paper at face value. On the internet, it is merely the illusion of authority that has been lost ... one doesn’t have to be reminded to read critically.

[Weaponier]

Jealous much?

Just because people don't come running to their ilk to get their information they still think they are relevant.

The Internet and what we are doing right now is taking them out of the equation and they hate it.

[Peter Libra]

Correction to my post #19.

My quote should read ....to educate and edify.....

Not: the educate. More care needed chum.

[varyouga]

Last I checked, white bread was still food despite what the health nazis say.

[jimmyray]

Other people here claim the sun orbits the earth and they all have internet research to back them up.

OK, so why do newspapers and daily local news list the sunrise and sunset times, if the sun does not orbit the earth? Duh!

[jimmyray]

Reading Free Republic can give very misleading results, too.

Sacrilege!

[Mojave]

It's the same type of people who constantly rely on Wikipedia as the Holy Grail of information.

Google purportedly has a Wikipedia killer in the works. Goggle Knol.

[Larry Lucido]

First two hits are Freerepublic.com. Third hit is Wiki entry. Of the rest of page 1, all but one or two are conservative sites referencing FR. Google done good.

[enduserindy]

Your comment is half right. I don’t clap when my 14 year old wipes her butt but i did when she was 3. The bottom line is if this is the first positive step for a mostly lacking generation of publicly educated young people we should encourage it. The MSM and the Democrats are proof positive young people are dullard just by their very existence. This kind of encouragement could lead to millions of new freepers.

[enduserindy]

http://www.lexrex.com/informed/otherdocuments/thelaw/thelaw.htm
All should read who haven’t.
This is who he was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat

[The Pack Knight]

I tend to agree, especially since it seems that his definition is "unreliable information" seems to be any information not carefully vetted by the academic community. Even textbooks can contain numerous errors and misapplications of key concepts.

Still, there is a kernel of truth to what he says. The ease with which information can be accessed can breed intellectual laziness if people don't think critically about the information they dig up on Google or Wikipedia. It takes effort to filter out a lot of the crap on the internet, but, that is true of any medium.

On the internet, just as anywhere else, one must always consider the source.