I got to watch an episode of American Family today, along with the first 40 minutes of In the Time of the Butterflies; both staring Edward James Olmos. American Family was pretty good, especially after the 3rd time and I realized the a large portion of the episode was a flash back. Prior to that realization I was really confused why the baby and the 8 year old boy both had the same name and the same mother.
I also covered for an 8th grade computer teacher. The kids had to do an "internet scavenger hunt." They were given various websites, and had to answer questions on the sites. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the first thing most of these little angels did was go to Answers.com instead, and just type in the question. When I told them, "no, that isn't how we're doing this. Part of this assignment is that you learn how to do your own research online," they acted as if I had just kicked their puppy. When the whining finally stopped, I caught several kids just typing the questions into Google. As if I'm not going to know that that is the exact same thing.
I'm going to sound like an old man here, but when I was their age, and I wanted to find out how many rooms were in the White House, I had to look it up in a book!
As a librarian, I know exactly what you mean about the internet scavenger hunt. (Actually, I think I had similar scavenger hunts in my MLIS class on reference.) Google ruins research skills.
ReplyDelete