Why The Internet Is Leading Students To Failure
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It’s always been important in most job situations to have some sort of post secondary education, especially during economically difficult times like we face today. During the years of University and College professors assign essays, reports, and other mind bending paper work. People use plenty of resources such as books, people, and other various articles of information to make their work as detailed as possible.
I left out the internet in the above list of resources because there’s a question illuminating of whether or not it should be deemed a definite resource. Why? Because no one knows whether the information coming from that source is accurate or legit. In modern times, people are assuming that because information is retrieved from the internet it’s going to be accurate. Unfortunately, in many cases that’s not true at all.
Hundreds of students each year learn when they hand in their assignment that parts of their paper are completely wrong. This may make or break a student when it comes to a pass or a fail. So what are some things to look for when figuring out the accuracy of a report?
- Date- Is the information you’ve gathered from a primary source? Is the date in sync with the time period you’re researching?
- Opinions- Is the report opinionated or informative? Generally documents that have opinions affiliated with it are less truthful and may influence people to believe certain things. Information should be simple and direct without influencing comments.
- Author- Is the author known? Does the author have experience within their field or area he’s studying? Figure out whether the author was either directly or indirectly affiliated with the subject they’re writing about.
I’d be curious to here what you guys think. Tell me whether you think the internet is accurate or just a pile of nonsensical garbage. Feel free to leave your opinion below.
5 Comments
zenium
March 25th, 2009
at 6:23pm
Doing IT support , I constantantly have people tell me they found the answer to their problem on the internet. And it usually is wrong.
The internet is just a tool and you have to properly know how to use the tool. That me you actually have to THINK to sift through the FUD, incorrect information to find the a usually tiny thread of truth that you can follow to a solution.
It really is all about being able to think and join and dimiss diverse pieces of information to develop a plausibile explanation for something.
etim
March 26th, 2009
at 6:15am
The same can be said about ALL sources of info, including textbooks and authority figures, unfortunately. Incorrect and/or controversial info presented as facts are much more difficult to dispute when in print form–the net does allow for alternate views to be accessed more readily.
Buffet
March 27th, 2009
at 3:31am
Two quotes immediately come to mind - “Don’t believe everything ya read” and “Consider the source”. The pen is mightier than the sword - unless you’re Conan.
Sak Sun
March 31st, 2009
at 1:31am
even in high school, if we reference a wikipedia page or similar in a paper, we’re immediately told to change it.
wiki=fail
Manny Guendulay
April 27th, 2009
at 3:18pm
As a high school librarian / media specialist, I have to say it is our most valued resource. But just as “the jaws of life” can be a valuable tool, if you do not know how to use it, you are not going to be doing anything but tearing up a car, possibly killing the person needing extraction.
However, it is not the internet that I’m teaching. I teach people to question. It is the user asking the right questions and being persistent with those questions that makes them good users of the internet. (Is this valid? Can this link to better info? Can I trust this? Can I find other work from this author)
Plus, the biggest problem in all of this is that as an academic, I search differently that your common user. After researching for years in graduate school crawling through databases, I learned some tricks to help me logically progress through the mountain of crap on the ‘net so that I can be delivered to a source of information that I need.
You don’t look for academic resources on Google, or Ask.com. And as for the Wiki statement. Wikipedia is an awesome resource, but as a former college English teacher, I wouldn’t take ANY encyclopedia as a resource for a paper. However, Wiki goes a step farther than World Book in print and shows you the articles that you CAN reference in a academic paper.
Now that I’ve identified the real problems, we just gotta think of the best ways to teach the skills I’ve developed over years of hard determined work.
One thing has to stop: visible filters that make students work within some sort of scope and prevents them from seeing “THE REAL WORLD WIDE WEB.” Kids need to learn how to surf and research by using the skills they employ regardless of a filter.
But these are great times for my field, and my school’s lucky that they have a geek like me to guide them.
Oh well, there’s my two cents.
-M