The Flattening of Learning

Professor Tara Brabazon makes a fantastic argument that students today have no way to discern truth from validity because they have no training when it comes to judging multiple truths.

On the Internet, and in scholarly searches, all returns are provided back to the searcher in a "flat mode" where every return appears as valid as the next.

Instead of challenging that fact, students merely cut-and-paste those flat search returns into their papers without doing any actual reading or critical analyses of the texts:

“Google offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments.

“Google is filling, but it does not necessarily offer nutritional content,” she said.

Professor Brabazon, who has been teaching in universities for 18 years, said that the heavy reliance on the internet in universities had the effect of “flattening expertise” because every piece of information was given the same credibility by users.

Professor Brabazon’s concerns echo the author Andrew Keen’s criticisms of online amateurism. In his book The Cult of the Amateur, Keen says: “To-day’s media is shattering the world into a billion personalised truths, each seemingly equally valid and worthwhile.”

We are thrilled to see Professor Brabazon's push for more credibility in the classroom.

Providing students with sharper tools for critical analysis that can then be used against what they read is a paramount concern if we ever hope to continue our ingenuity and creativity beyond the flatness of the Internet.

Why We Support the Open Library

The Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive and a fresh sort of take as a historical subset of the Wayback Machine:

The Open Library website was created by the Internet Archive to demonstrate a way that books can be represented online. The vision is to create free web access to important book collections from around the world.

Books are scanned and then offered in an easy-to-use interface for free reading online. If they're in the public domain, the books can be downloaded, shared and printed for free. They can also be printed for a nominal fee by a third party, who will bind and mail the book to you. The books are always FREE to read at the Open Library website.

The Open Library provides equal access to books that might not otherwise be available to the general public the world over.

If we believe information belongs to all of us -- and we do -- then supporting the means and the memes for equal access to learning must be the preeminent effort for each of us.

Laptops in the Classroom

Many universities are giving up on their idea of "One Laptop Per Student" theory in the classroom because computers interfere with learning.

Traditional Universities also want to remove WiFi and other communication connections from being available during teaching sessions because students are surfing the web and creating email instead of being involved in class.

When the classroom becomes virtual and the only way to communicate and learn and interact is through the keyboard or the video conference -- one begins to realize the irreconcilable conflict between traditional learning methods and the necessary collaborative memes of Distance Learning.

We believe not in "one laptop per student" but in "multiple computers for all students" and we get there by internetworking and creating connectoids to each other.