Education versus the Internet
I am a fan of Bob Cringely’s Pulpit. He is one of those guys who were blogging years before blogs, and his IT industry column is always fascinating and amusing. His latest column is very scary for an academic to read. Its about the impact of information technology on education. Most arguments on this take one of two positions; either that IT is a great opportunity we must seize, or that it is a threat that stops students concentrating. Cringely suggests that the search-and-graze style associated with the Google era will eventually be seen to be good for education per se, but that it will destroy the traditional institutions that get paid to deliver it. College not needed.
If this depresses you too much, head over to the latest xkcd cartoon. (Thanks to Dave Pearson).
March 27, 2008 at 3:34 pm
It’s a very good question… Subjects where it is necesary to do practical things such as physics lab work or landscape surveying will, I guess, be the last to go. I did wonder why my son doing history at a leading British university needed to live in the city where it was based when he only had 3-5 hours a week of contact time. Commuting would have been cheaper… Perhaps the OU is the model for the future?
March 27, 2008 at 5:08 pm
A very unique file hosting website, that allows you to upload/share and search textual files, such as MS word, PDF, text, MS Excel etc. very helpful resource for students and
researchers, thousands of available documents…
MaiFile
April 3, 2008 at 4:43 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o