The University of Google [Hardcover]

Tara Brabazon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 075467097X | ISBN-13: 978-0754670971 | Publication Date: November 20, 2007

Looking at schools and universities, it is difficult to pinpoint when education, teaching and learning started to haemorrhage purpose, aspiration and function. Libraries and librarians have been starved of funding. Teachers cram their curriculum with 'skill development' and 'generic competencies' because knowledge, creativity and originality are too expensive to provide to unmotivated students and parents obsessed with league tables, not learning.Meanwhile, the internet offers a glut of information on everything-under-the-sun, a mere mouse-click away. Bored surfers fill their cursors and minds with irrelevancies. We lose the capacity to sift, discard and judge. Information is no longer for social good, but for sale.Tara Brabazon argues that this information fetish has been profoundly damaging to our learning institutions and to the ambitions of our students and educators. In "The University of Google", she projects a defiant and passionate vision of education as a pathway to renewal, where research is based on searching and students are on a journey through knowledge, rather than consumers in the shopping centre of cheap ideas.Angry, humorous and practical in equal measure, "The University of Google" is based on real teaching experience and on years of engaged and sometimes exasperated reflection on it. It is far from a luddite critique of the information age. Tara Brabazon celebrates the possibilities of digital platforms in education, but deplores the consequences of placing funding on technology and not teachers. In doing so, she opens a new debate on how to make our educational system both productive and provocative in the (post-) information age.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tara Brabazon is Professor of Media at the University of Brighton, UK, and Director of the Popular Culture Collective.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Ashgate (November 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 075467097X
• ISBN-13: 978-0754670971
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,258,420 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tara was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1969. She is an award winning teacher, speaker and writer. Best known for her books on popular culture and online education, her goal is to challenge assumptions about teaching and learning. Tara is interested in discovering the voices and views of those silenced through traditional history. For her, popular culture carries a trace - a lipstick trace - of the passions, stories and ideas of disempowered communities.

Her personal website is www.brabazon.net.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Students in search of a face-to-face teacher, October 18, 2010

By 

M. Werner (Lake Superior State University) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The University of Google (Hardcover)

Tara Brabazon's book "University of Google" (2007) provides a complete discussion of the issues surrounding the push in higher education towards online delivery of course content. Brabazon discusses how university administrators have been economically pressured to increase revenues and reduce the cost of faculty through the use of online courses. She provides numerous literature references arguing that the primary mission of universities, namely a student's education, has and will continue to suffer using this approach. While there is a significant discussion of the advantages of online tools, such as Google, there is also a thoughtful argument presented that states, "Google is facilitating laziness, poor scholarship, and compliant thinking." Brabazon attempts to provide some remedies to this push toward online education, but I wish that she would have explored this more with additional concrete examples of alternatives to the use of the online approach. Most of the examples she does provide come from the Arts and Humanities but can be applied more broadly across the spectrum of disciplines in higher education. Her argument that students miss out on the non-textual cues (i.e. other student responses, smells, tastes, etc.) by viewing an online lecture rather than a face-to-face lecture is compelling. I came away from reading this book inspired to focus on improving my own lecture skills and enhancing interactions with students in the classroom. I agree with Brabazon's assessment that "students are not consumers", and education is most effective when rigorous, challenging, and at times painful. Only when students are challenged to the brink are they truly transformed into well educated, literate, critical human beings.