Google and Wikipedia not good for students?

Got a bit intrigued with this article on The Argus UK about a university lecturer bannng students from using Google and Wikipedia, adding that many students don’t use their own brains enough in doing research and analysis.

It has been debated for quite some time that the use of Wikipedia by university students should be discouraged. In recent years, more and more students are relying on the internet for their term papers and doing research. The library has now been ditched in favor of the world wide web.

Prof Brabazon said: “The education world has pursued new technology with an almost evangelical zeal and it is time to take a step back and give proper consideration of how we use it. Too many students don’t use their own brains enough. We need to bring back the important values of research and analysis.” She calls this phenomenon The University of Google.

She said thousands of students across the country, including those at the universities of Brighton and Sussex, were churning out banal and mediocre work by using what search engines provided them.

During my college years, when the internet was sting young and not a lot of information was available online, most of the research that I do came from stacks of books, CD encyclopedias and microfiches. It was tedious, very time consuming, expensive (tons of print-outs) and sometimes the statistical data I gather are outdated.

Back then, I didn’t know Google. I was using Alta Vista and Yahoo most of the time while Wikipedia was not yet born.

“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 young people were finishing education with shallow ideas and needed to learn interpretative skills before starting to use technology.

Compare that to today’s vast resources on the internet. Student programmers can always sneak into Google Code Search and copy a snippet of code, chem students can read up on how to mix nitric and sulfuric acids and end up cooking trinitroglycerin, or totally copy and paste and entire Wikipedia entry on Magellan’s discovery of the Philippines islands.

Of course, not everyone will do that. But, with the right amount of academic pressure, sometimes these kids will do just about anything just to get a passing mark. Most will go the path of least resistance.

Still, I think it’s all up to the students. To those who’ve just graduated recently or are still studying, is the internet a necessary tool in your research?