Just watched a very interesting doco on our "fifth" television station here, SBS, on the spreading influence of Google. It was titled, "Google: Behind The Screen" and was an interesting expose behind the rise of Google and its widening and sometimes tightening grip on our world of digital information. It was put together by a Dutch documentary team but thankfully was screened in English (for this monolingual blogger.) Not sure how anyone could get to view it if you wanted to but it was very watchable. I love the 20% rule that is in place for Google employees. One day of their working week is given over to employees pursuing their own choice of work related interests - imagine if educators were valued that highly!
Jo McLeay
“love the 20% rule that is in place for Google employees. One day of their working week is given over to employees pursuing their own choice of work related interests – imagine if educators were valued that highly!” How true! What a vision.
Artichoke
Hi Graham, also love the 20% rule. We seem to be puzzling over similar issues – I’ve been reading Brabazon who has an interesting take on the way Google uses education at a tertiary level
A problem has emerged in my teaching during the last three years that requires attention. As each semester progresses, a greater proportion of my students are reading less, referencing infrequently and writing with little clarity and boldness.
These problems are not caused by Google. Technology is never the cause of societal problems, inside or outside a university. Instead, the popularity of Google is facilitating laziness, poor scholarship and compliant thinking. It is a panacea for our time-poor students.
The underpinning technology for Google is PageRank, which is an ‘objective’ measurement of important web pages assembled by the number of links that point to them. Therefore Google ranks their search results via the number of links and hits to that site.
The assumption of Google is that popularity is synonymous with quality. Pop Idol, American Idol and Australian Idol were popular. They did not promote quality singing. Google is the internet equivalent of reality television: popular, fast and shallow.
and even better – if you check the link she offers interesting solutions
BA (Google): Graduating to information literacy Tara Brabazon School of Media, Communication and Culture Murdoch University Murdoch Western Australia