The End of Education: WHY I HATE GOOGLE
When I was young I had a Kodak "Brownie" camera. http://www.photo.net/history/timeline tells me that it was one of the first cameras with roll type film launched in 1900. With the advent of cameras the world of graphic art changed completely. Artists found their mission threatened. If the objective of an artist was to faithfully represent art, then the photographer beat the painter hollow. Art is NOT about reproducing reality on an AS-IS-WHERE-IS basis, its about changing reality to represent things differently. A photographer is not known for the accuracy of his reproduction (such reputations belonged to the Carl Ziess and other equipment manufacturer's of the world), the photographer is known, above all for perspective. For being in the right place at the right time (Say press or documentaries) or for being able to tell a story through the picture.
Now GOOGLE is doing it to us educators ( http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3675c1d8-5e43-11da-a9e8-0000779e2340.html ). For years educational institutions were repositories of knowledge, books were expensive to reproduce, hence a few libraries came up where books were stored and maintained. Reading was not a widespread skill, hence along with the libraries were a few researchers who could also tell you what was in the books. To get a feel of such institutions, you could read "The Name of the Rose" By Umberto Eco. Its also interesting to note that the Bible and the Service itself was in latin, a language that was considered to be the "lingua franca" of the educated classes.
I myself came to academics when after my Ph.D. I found that it was hard to get access to information where I could learn new things. Those were the days when I used a dialup line over the long distance (STD) connection to use a text based (Lynx) browser. Today I go into a class filled with 60 or more of the brightest minds in the country. They have information available at their finger tips. What is worse I have given them a session by session outline which means they know what they are going to learn in the classroom. Its hard to think of something refreshingly new to say!
Students do all sorts of horrible things when they are given internet access. Ofcourse they swap digital music and video. That goes against the very grain of the Knowledge Society, which sees most revenues from Knowledge Products like patents, software, music, etc. that can be lisenced. Students are dumb, so its not surprising. Perhaps they werent so dumb after all? When Google challenged copyright, it was completely different from a kaazaa or filesharing systems.
Now they threaten education. In a world where information is available at the click of a button, where there is wifi in class and everyone has laptops, what happens?
1. Students don't listen to lectures, they would rather chat.
2. They use SMS to exchange answers for tests.
3. They don't write their own answers, they only cut and paste
4. They dont memorize enough, they know its easily available on the net
5. They are oversmart and sometimes they think they know more than the teachers.
The problem is that I believe they are all......NOT NECESSARILY BAD. The real problem is that all this threatens us, teachers. What would we do if students had access to information? The same question that raised its head when Martin Luther said that individual believers should be able to interpret the bible for themselves.
So if a student can read the "facts", what does it leave us teachers to do? I think we have become dinosaurs. We have two E's in front of us. Evolve or become Extinct. I wonder what is the next step?
Now GOOGLE is doing it to us educators ( http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3675c1d8-5e43-11da-a9e8-0000779e2340.html ). For years educational institutions were repositories of knowledge, books were expensive to reproduce, hence a few libraries came up where books were stored and maintained. Reading was not a widespread skill, hence along with the libraries were a few researchers who could also tell you what was in the books. To get a feel of such institutions, you could read "The Name of the Rose" By Umberto Eco. Its also interesting to note that the Bible and the Service itself was in latin, a language that was considered to be the "lingua franca" of the educated classes.
I myself came to academics when after my Ph.D. I found that it was hard to get access to information where I could learn new things. Those were the days when I used a dialup line over the long distance (STD) connection to use a text based (Lynx) browser. Today I go into a class filled with 60 or more of the brightest minds in the country. They have information available at their finger tips. What is worse I have given them a session by session outline which means they know what they are going to learn in the classroom. Its hard to think of something refreshingly new to say!
Students do all sorts of horrible things when they are given internet access. Ofcourse they swap digital music and video. That goes against the very grain of the Knowledge Society, which sees most revenues from Knowledge Products like patents, software, music, etc. that can be lisenced. Students are dumb, so its not surprising. Perhaps they werent so dumb after all? When Google challenged copyright, it was completely different from a kaazaa or filesharing systems.
Now they threaten education. In a world where information is available at the click of a button, where there is wifi in class and everyone has laptops, what happens?
1. Students don't listen to lectures, they would rather chat.
2. They use SMS to exchange answers for tests.
3. They don't write their own answers, they only cut and paste
4. They dont memorize enough, they know its easily available on the net
5. They are oversmart and sometimes they think they know more than the teachers.
The problem is that I believe they are all......NOT NECESSARILY BAD. The real problem is that all this threatens us, teachers. What would we do if students had access to information? The same question that raised its head when Martin Luther said that individual believers should be able to interpret the bible for themselves.
So if a student can read the "facts", what does it leave us teachers to do? I think we have become dinosaurs. We have two E's in front of us. Evolve or become Extinct. I wonder what is the next step?
posted by mathai at 1:09 AM
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