Gordaen’s Blog

“You must use at least 3 resources from the library.” Anyone who has been in school in the past ten years has probably heard a teacher say something like this. If you’re anything like me, a limitation on the types of resources you can use because a teacher doesn’t trust the Internet (or worse, doesn’t trust your ability to discriminate between valid and invalid resources) is absolutely frustrating. The Internet is a medium, just like paper is, but it allows for more freedom (don’t we value that?) and more frequent updates.

There is nothing inherently untrustworthy as far as the Internet goes. Wikipedia is one of the most commonly untrusted sites. Why? Because anyone can add to it. Therefore, many teachers assume that means it is invalid. Their assumption must be something like people don’t know anything about X subject but know enough about technology and have enough free time to make up inaccurate information to put online, or maybe people are inherently evil and want to give false info, or maybe that the Internet is solely a propaganda machine (much like any political campaign), or…? The only valid argument to not using Wikipedia is that encyclopedias are traditionally supposed to be “common” knowledge and not in-depth (but that has obviously changed). Plus, you can always go to Wikipedia and look at what articles are cited on a particular topic and pursue those. A printed encyclopedia can have inaccurate information (what happens when we disprove a theory?) and so can a web-based encyclopedia. The difference is that one can be updated in minutes and the other will take a year and a lot of money.

One might try to go with the “but the Internet doesn’t have editors” argument. Rather than pointing out that everyone who uses Wikipedia is a potential editor (or that they actually do have people and bots who solely act as editors), I think it’s more valuable to note that books have had editors and still had inaccuracies. Plus, you wouldn’t reference an X-men comic book for a biology paper on genetics (”Well, Professor X said it was a genetic mutation caused by…”), because we all know that is ridiculous. We learn from a young age which printed resources are valid and which are not. Many of us also learn which electronic resources are valid and which are not. Those who have not learned to make that distinction should be taught the skill of identifying the credibility of an online resource. We shouldn’t allow blanket statements about the Internet being inaccurate or unreliable.

Perhaps the comic book is too obvious of an example. What if a student quotes the bible for his/her geology paper? It’s a printed book, so it must be more reliable than any Geologists’ Association online!

Prior to the “Web 2.0″ shift, a good counter to teachers claiming “Anyone can put something online” was to ask, “Really? Do you know HTML and how to use SFTP?” Of course their claim of the Internet having no credibility stems from fear of the unfamiliar, so the teacher is highly unlikely to know anything concrete about the Internet, let alone HTML. If you were talking to someone particularly… stuffy, s/he might say, “No, but I can learn it.” Then you just ask the teacher what resource s/he is going to use to learn HTML. What resource will s/he use to find a web host? I sure hope it isn’t the Internet, because that thing is not reliable!

Some teachers might say that they don’t allow Internet resources to be referenced because some students can’t determine a site’s credibility. Why don’t these teachers teach their students this valuable skill? “That’s not my area. I’m a ____ teacher, not a technology teacher!” When they drive their cars away from the mechanic shop and get into an accident because their brake lines had a leak, I hope they try to sue the mechanic who did the oil change so he could say, “Well yeah, I saw that your car was dripping brake fluid, but that’s not my area. I just change the oil.”