Quote:
Originally Posted by jbcohen
... They tell me that they have a campus issued internet connection and desktop PC in every dorm room that students can use to attend classes. So in a sense they have sort of done away with the college. An old pal of mine tells me in addition to this in his undergraduate they have closed the library and made the entire library available on line to all students 24x7x365 ...
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The UK has its
Open University, which has offered distance learning courses since 1971, and of course it makes extensive use of the Internet, but students still have to spend a certain amount of time each year on campus, to interact with academics and participate in group practical work.
Whilst a vast amount of information for students is available on the Internet, there is still a humongous amount that is not. Clearly, whether or not the amount of on-line information is sufficient, depends on the discipline being studied. For example,
The British Library has put 30,000 items on-line. Does that seem a lot?
British Library to offer free ebook downloads
The Sunday Times - 7 February 2010
"More than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from this spring."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Namekuseijin
... Universities grew out of large medieval libs, which used to be the repository of all knowledge. The internet is such place now, but it's got not just knowledge but also much noise, so filters are necessary for people to separate useful knowledge from all the junk. That's the only thing which may still deem Universities worthwhile.
of course, before going to University or indeed search for knowledge by yourself in the vastness of cyberspace, you need to learn to read and how to interpret what you read. That's the goal of basic schools and teachers so I don't think they should go.
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You seem to be saying, the Internet supersedes all universities, they only serve to teach students how to interpret information gleaned from the Internet, and it is the responsibility of "basic schools and teachers" to teach students to interpret what they read. That seems illogical to me.