DISQUS

That's bad ass! Micah, you are awesome.

And Grant gets my Douchebag vote because of loyalty and whatnot -- but this blog entry clearly proved that the Douchebag Force is strong with this one. Or something.

Robert,
How did I contradict myself? I said that banning Google seems a bit much, but banning it as a primary source (which is what I think this professor is doing) seems perfectly reasonable. And yes, it is draconian to ban something, but that might be the only way that this teacher is able to enforce a no-Wikipedia sourced paper rule that doesn't mean automatically failing anyone who is using it. Granted, if you have to go to those lengths to get students to actually work, you are probably a pretty craptacular professor - I don't disagree with that, but the overall sentiment that Google and Wikipedia should not be primary sources for college research is something I fully support.

Although it sound draconian (and it is), if a professor wants to force students to use actual research tools (and Wikipedia isn't and never will be), banning the outright use of the sites is the only way to actually accomplish that. I'm a student - if you don't set the parameters just so - especially for research sources - you will end up with utter crap as the results (I have watched peers do this for years). While banning Google might be a bit much - banning Google as a primary source seems totally acceptable to me.

None of my profeessors outright ban Google, but I guarantee that if I tried to use Wikipedia as or a generic Google queery as a source for ANYTHING, I would be laughed out of the classroom and given a failing grade. And that would be deserved. Plus, let's not forget that almost every college or university has access to systems like Lexis-Nexis (I can even access that from home using my student ID login - I have to be on campus to access West Law, but Lexis is a God-send) and other research databases that are not only much better and more reliable, but frankly, as easy to use as Google or Wikipedia anyway.

Students use Google and Wikipedia because they are lazy and they want to avoid real work -- if banning those sources is the only way to get them to actually learn/work/research, how can you fault that?