Teachers v. Internet:
Why are we fighting?
By Dylan Biles
Staff Writer
I’ve been at North Lake for six months
now and I’ve noticed a trend that is beginning
to bother me. There is a bias that exists within
our faculty, and while it isn’t malicious,
like most biases it results in denying student
access to the richest of resources.
There is a bias against the Internet.
Most of us have seen it firsthand. A research
paper is deemed unacceptable because an Internet
source was used, or a professor says, “You
can’t use Wikipedia!” with a lip
snarl that rivals the best of Elvis Presley and
makes you fear more for your life than your grade.
This anti-Internet bias, a bias against the most
promising technological development since the
microchip made home computers a reality instead
of science-fiction, is as rampant among our faculty
as it is unfounded.
It’s easy to understand why the bias exists
in the first place. Historically, the Internet
has been the playground of the plagiarist. In
fact, after the porn Web sites staked their claim,
the first people to exploit the Internet were
gossipmongers who published rumors and innuendo
(and all that did was get a President impeached.
I’m just saying, if it’s good enough
for the U.S. House of Representatives…).
But seriously folks, things have changed, and
while it isn’t old enough to be your father’s,
let’s just say that this is certainly not
your older brother’s Internet. A few things
have happened that have made the Internet much
more reliable.
First of all, the Internet is becoming more accurate.
Wikipedia, the oft-maligned Internet encyclopedia,
is the best example. What makes Wikipedia different
than other encyclopedias is how its content is
created. Based on the concept of a Wiki, an open-sourced,
online module which allows content to be created
and edited by anyone, the contents of an entry
on Wikipedia are written by its users. This means
that the entry on “Coffee” could
just as easily have been written by your local
Barista as a doctor of botany at Cal-Berkeley.
And that’s where instructors get concerned.
If anyone can write the information, then the
information is bound to be inaccurate, right?
Wrong. In December 2005, Nature Magazine did
a study comparing over 40 entries on Wikipedia
to entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica for
accuracy. Both encyclopedias had four serious
factual errors, and the Encyclopedia Britannica
had close to 40 more factual errors than Wikipedia
did.
The reason: Wikipedia relies on 13,000 volunteers
who run their self-regulating editorial system.
The collective intelligence of these self-motivated
editors has created an accurate resource which
contains an amazing amount of information.
Blogs have become the newest form of punditry.
But you’ve been told over and over again
that you can’t trust blogs. David Brooks
writes an op-ed column in the New York Times
which makes his stuff usable, but I can’t
trust James Wolcott (who is an esteemed writer
for Vanity Fair) just because the article I want
to quote is on his blog? Something’s got
to give.
That’s where common sense comes in. People trust the Times because they’ve
proven themselves trustworthy over time. The same goes for bloggers. Once a blogger
earns credibility, he is just as dependable as Walter Cronkite.
Some members of our campus have embraced the
Internet. The Foreign Language Lab has recently
changed its procedures to make use of the Internet’s ease.
Where students used to be required to spend 30 hours in the lab, now the requirement
is 15 hours in the lab and 15 hours that can be done at home over the Internet.
Online classes have increased both in availability and popularity as well.
But the Internet’s primary benefit isn’t in its convenience but as
a source of information. Our faculty is more than willing to use the Internet
to communicate with their students while simultaneously discouraging them from
using the Internet for its most beneficial aspect: as a vast source of information.
This indicates an extreme lack of vision.
The world is
changing, and if our faculty refuses to change
with it, the only people who will be hurt are
the students.
— Dylan Biles is
on the staff of the News-Register and a journalism
major.
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