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Not All Books Have Pages

I can't believe I'm about to tell a story that involves the progression of the Internet using my freshman year of high school as an example of "the Stone Age," but it's true.

When I first started high school, information wasn't nearly as accessible as it is now. Oh sure, it was there, but there wasn't any Wikipedia and most search engines were still in their embryo form. You had to dig a lot deeper to find most of the information you can now find just by typing a few words into Google.

One thing I clearly remember from being in high school is that we always had to find two kinds of sources for each paper or project:

Online sources and book sources.

Believe it or not, I still see students come into the library I work at with the same rules.

"Only Three Online Sources Allowed."

My co-workers and I try to explain to these students that there really isn't a difference between the two anymore. You can find magazine articles and whole books online.

When we explain this, they look at us, sigh, and say--"Yeah, but my teacher said..."

And the sad thing is--

They're right.

Their teachers don't realize that the online/in print difference doesn't exist anymore.

They seem to have this sentimental vision of their students scanning text in old, dusty books in vast libraries finding some magical fact that's never been found before.

Basically, they want their students to suffer simply because they had to when they were students. They don't want to accept that things are actually a lot easier now.

Instead of having their students take advantage of all the Internet has to offer, they tell them that it's unreliable and they need to continue to find their information in print.

As if everything that's printed is automatically fact.

It's archaic, and it certainly isn't going to help them become better researchers, let alone enjoy the process of researching (if that's even possible).

Teachers need to do away with this nostalgic way of thinking about putting together a paper.

If they did, who knows what their students could come up with?

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