What issues do you find about searching online? Unorganized resources? Fake information? Taking it easy?

I could not agree more with issues with Web 2.0 inquiry found out in Crook (2012)'s study: unauthorized resources, unorganized resources, and simply copy or cut and paste. They are so true. In old times, I relied on Wikipedia to search for new terms or phrases or events. Later, someone told me there were lots of mistake with Wikipedia results, and I should not trust it. Now I would just use it to check the background for the topic I am interested, and then continue to search online for other resources.

When searching for answers to our questions, we are always offered lots of unorganized resources out there. Many irrelevant but interesting entertainment websites popping up always distract us from the questions we are really working on. For example, we may be attracted by gossiping news about a movie star. In my case, I sometimes need to search for articles related to one topic. Once I searched for articles about a topic, lots of pictures, news, or social networking sites came out. I was upset with the large amount of information. Even though I narrowed down my research by setting the keywords in the google scholar, I got hundreds of articles which were not so related. Then when I used the Proquest to search for articles, still hundreds of articles came out. It took me time to choose articles I should check out. As Crook (2012) argued students really need support in finding right high-quality learning resources.

The last issue is actually most important. Web 2.0 tools make it too easy to cut, and then paste. When students work on their paper, when they find some interesting ideas posted by someone online, they feel an urge to cut, and paste. I have been there. When I was an undergraduate student, when writing a paper about why one educational policy or theory was working well, I would search for answers to that question. I rarely read though the book or articles about the topic back then. I just copied and pasted others’ opinions without thinking critically about it. I must admit that cutting and pasting really interfere with students’ critical thinking and independent thinking. With the popularity of Web 2.0 tools, regarding a theory or policy, we can find so diversified voices out there from so many people all over the world. This makes students feel safe to just cut and paste some sentences from somewhere because they think teachers must not have time to go through all resources related to a topic. I did feel in this way back then. Eventually, I was told students’ thinking was totally wrong. With much experiences, most teachers can easily detect whether construct your own ideas by integrating existing resources, or easily steal others’ ideas.

So what do you think of the three problems with Web 2.0 inquiry?

References


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Crook, C. (2012). The ‘digital native’ in context: tensions associated with importing
     Web 2.0 practices into the school setting. Oxford Review of Education, 38(1),  
     63-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2011.577946