Please Don’t Cite YouTube In Your Book Report
I honestly don’t know anymore whether my horror at the lack of book learning is justified, or whether I have some form of early-onset fuddy-duddy-itis. The information age is glorious, don’t get me wrong; I love finding the answer to my question within seconds of wondering about it. There is a phenomenal pile of facts and factoids on the Internet, which, for the most part, is fan-effing-tastic.
But (you knew there’d be a ‘but’) it freaks me out that the shrimpy humans of the computer-having world are tossing books and libraries to the wind and are relying pretty heavily on the Internet Oracle for all their knowledge-seeking needs. It’s not like I can fight it, as online information is not a scourge of any kind. So, I should probably just give up and walk away and accept that only eccentric, paper-loving freaks like me will continue patronizing libraries and reading dead tree editions.
Here’s the NY Times article that triggered this rant. Kids are apparently using not only Wikipedia and Google, they’ve also started using YouTube as a reference source. It hurts me on the inside, and yet, the inevitability is hard to fight.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
I think eventually YouTube will carry quality information (think those lectures from MIT, Harvard) but what we as educators need to do is teach our students how to evaluate these sources. Why a youtube video by a professor in California might be more reliable than a random student in their bedroom discussing something.
I am currently a 40 year old mom and non-traditional student. I was reading about a theory and said out loud “I wonder about this person,
I wish that I could hear her discuss this topic”. She said what’s her name I told her… she went to youtube and emailed me the link! I was so excited, so taken aback that actually I heard it right from the horses mouth! Not to mention that Isoo Kim Berg had died in 2007 and someone caught the moment on video and it was free too!
Infact, she shed more light on what the author of my text was trying to teach about HER perspective!
Maybe if children and other students alike are very careful this newness can be incorporated as well as an advantage. Take it from a woman that had a hard time dealing with and still afraid of microwaves and,both cordless and cell phones lol.