14 DAY TRIAL // Research essays on Google and Wikipedia? We can't have that, said Tara Brabazon, a lecturer from the University of Brighton, who got furious with the quality of the work her students had been doing. Seeing that it was banal and mediocre exactly because it was a reflection of what search engines provided, she stomped her foot and said that it had to end.
"I ban my students from using Google, Wikipedia and other websites like that. I give them a reading list to work from and expect them to cite a good number of them in any work they produce", she said in the "Brighton Argus" newspaper. "I don't think students come to university to learn how to use Google, they can all do that before they get here", she followed.
The issue that she will be talking about on Wednesday at the Sallis Benney Theatre in Grand Parade, Brighton, in a lecture called "Google Is White Bread for the Mind", is one that has been noticed throughout the entire world, the comfort that using Google or a similar search engine for gathering the information cannot be matched by having to read a book and manually extract whatever it is you need from its pages, rephrasing it and adding personal ideas.
Wikipedia is indeed not a very reliable source of information because of the way users can edit the articles and, by that, either screw them up or there's a chance the information is wrong from the beginning. This measure of not letting students use Google and Wiki may have its downsides, not every book in the curriculum is easily obtainable and so on. But come to think of it, Tara Brabazon is actually trying to scoff modern technology without a means to see whether her ban is useful. Who is to stop a student who has found a source with Google to write down that he actually read the book and not downloaded its e-form? The information in it is the same?