I encourage you to read Digital Dieting if you are a teacher in
higher education. Or work in a library and/or work with information literacy.
Or if you're simply interested in the combination of technology and education. Tara
Brabazon writes in a language that will appeal to you. I promise! (Sort of ...)
This blog is a sorry chapter in my online
presence. What started out as good intentions, ended up with just that - good
intentions. It's been two months since I last wrote anything useful. Which is
not good enough, I tell myself. But the truth is, I probably won't do any
better this year. My workdays are far too busy to allow much reading or
writing. And in the evenings, I'm usually too exhausted to be creative. But
fortunately, Christmas is perfect for reading, so I managed to finish this book
- which I started early in the autumn.
Brabazon is a professor of education at
Charles Sturt University in Australia. I've never seen her live, but there are
plenty of material online from vodcasts, lectures and presentations, all
showing her as passionate and deeply engaging teacher/speaker. She writes as
she speaks - with fervour and passion, but clear and rational.
Digital
Dieting wants us to stop and think about the
technology we use in our teaching. Brabazon does not want us to stop using
technology, but to limit it and make informed choices when we do use it. Some
might say she exaggerates a bit. She rages against the iPad for instance, against our society of waste and devices we don't need, against PowerPoint,
against bad teaching and lazy students, and not the least, against HE managers
without the necessary competence.
One of her important messages is to
maintain the quality of higher education on a level which produces the best
possible students and citizens. Which means not dumbing down to make students’
lives easier. Which means maintaining a clear divide between education and
leisure, between education and entertainment. Education should not be like
Facebook, where everything is about mundane status updates and clicks and
likes. Education must make students struggle, meet challenges, break barriers.
That is when learning occurs. Students need to be told this. And teachers need
to teach accordingly. I couldn't agree more!
I don't necessarily agree with everything
she writes, but that's not the point. Being technology friendly myself, the
book has made me reconsider some aspects of my own information literacy teaching,
and hopefully this will benefit the students.
Brabazon, Tara (2013): Digital Dieting: From Information Obesity to Intellectual Fitness. Ashgate,
Farnham.
