This article specifically dealt with students using the Internet for all their research. It also talked about how entire novels can be read on line, however, when using the Internet something is lost in the reading. When students read on line they lose the tone of the book as well as the meaning, because the Internet gives shortened versions of everything with things such as spark notes.
I would have to agree with this article. Although the Internet allows you to do work faster than searching through books at the library, the Internet is still very unreliable. Anyone can post things on line so it is difficult to separate the accurate information from the information that was simply made up. Students use this information as though it is all true and don't even consider what kind of website their on. For instance, in the article a teacher discusses how her students looked up information on Mexican immigration. The information they found was negative towards Mexicans and the information came from a neo-Nazi website. In this case, the information may be embellished but the students think it's accurate.
Personally, I do not like using the Internet for my research. I am always concerned with whether or not the information I have gathered is accurate or not. Using the Internet also helps lead to plagiarism. Nothing is stopping students from copy and pasting. When you are actually reading from a book, copy and paste is not an option. Also, I would not want to read a novel on the computer. The best part of a book is being able to sit and read it for a long period of time. When I read on the computer, I begin to get irritated and can't sit looking at the screen for a long time. Therefore I refuse to keep reading and just leave the computer. When I sit and read a book I am comfortable and don't have other things distracting me. Also, according to the article, books on line lose the tone of the book which is something that is important to the book.
There are some good things with reading on line. For instance, things are done faster and there easier to find. However, the only way your really going to have accurate information is in books.
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2 comments:
I must agree with Melissa, that the internet is highly un-reliable, regardless that information is much easier to access. The unreliability of the internet is not a highlighted fact, but it should be. Once doing a project on rape, a friend looked up the definition on Wikipedia, and it read,"Rape is fun!" This incident along with others shows how just anyone can put information up on the world wide web.
As for reading on the computer versus reading a book, I must side with the book aspect. There is some kind of comfort in being able to read a book. Staring at a screen is so mechanical and not enjoyable as a book can be. As helpful as computers are, they should not run every aspect of our lives and also the activities that we need to do as humans.
I agree with Melissa in that the internet can be unreliable, but I think that the negative effect of its unreliable sources is outweighed by its many positive effects. People simply need to learn to evaluate internet sources better. I took a class in high school to help me to do so. It would be a good idea to incorporate techniques for evaluating sources into an English classroom. I enjoy many of the internet's resources. For example, for my ENG297 research paper, the wonderful compilation of scholarly journals named JSTOR allowed me to have access to a collection of sources that I would not have found without its help.
Although I feel that the internet is great for many reasons, I am a bit concerned with its effect on reading. I agree with Melissa in that there is a comfort in reading an actual book. It's sad that people don't know the smell or feel of a book. Something is certainly lost when reading from a computer screen. I agree that plagiarism is an issue the internet has heightened. However, I think short attention spans are an equally negative side effect. Although the article says, "The same culture that's given us Google has given us the 800-page Harry Potter novel," I think that this novel is an exception. Most people don't read, and if they do read, it's simply headlines. Genres like flash fiction or graphic novels I feel are the products of a generation too "wired" to appreciate novels.
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