Internet: Valuable Resource and Peddler

While I agree with many of Richard Hammond’s reservations about the Internet as a universal tool for learning and teaching, his example of finding only the price for europium from an Internet search indicates a failure on his part to use it even moderately well. A search using Google led quickly to http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Eu/key.html , which gives history, uses, geology, biology, reactions, compounds, bond enthalpies, and so on. This site contains enough information to keep any student occupied for quite a while. Indeed, I’ve book-marked it for my own further use.

This is just the kind of question that the Web is very good at answering, and in my experience, information can be found on just about any subject, whether it’s “Where is the fluorine atom in fluorene?” (answer nowhere; there isn’t any) or “What is the current phone number for that motel I stayed at 10 years ago in Green Valley Lake?”

Yes, it takes some ingenuity to select search parameters judiciously, and yes you can get a lot of chaff with the wheat on some subjects, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how useful the Internet is.

Where I think we probably agree is in the assertion that simply having access to the Internet is no substitute for critical thinking and enough general knowledge that one can evaluate information intelligently.