Internet's impact on students and academics

Tried to post this entirely-too-long comment on YouTube but got twittered with a character count limit. Posted part of it there and the rest here.

Totally agreed. Same thing for students doing research. Internet sources are often considered unqualified, even if they may be the most relevant and up-to-date information available. Yes, a lot of info out there is crap, but that shouldn’t preclude the relevant information from being used. There is plenty of outdated crap in the library (and in our journalism and advertising textbooks, I might add) that professors deem acceptable. As far as I know though, there isn’t really an authoritative way to qualify most online information. But does it need to be qualified to be useful? Certainly it depends on the industry.

Maybe students should be required to blog certain papers and assignments, so there is more interaction and discussion and people can read the quality of work (be it good or bad) coming out of an institution. It might also make students put more effort into their assignments, if they know people other than their professors can see them. Instead of 5-page papers about nothing with three paragraphs of legitimate worth, let students blog what is good and develop conversations about that. Attribution is much easier in a blog, too. Links beat overformatted bibliographies.

Parts of this remind me of Chris Anderson’s view in his book, Free. He says, because it is so cheap now, to waste processing power, memory and information in order to generate the most ideas by allowing everything to be published and letting the best rise to the top.