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Digital Hemlock: Internet education and the poisoning of teaching
Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002
ISBN: 086840781X
Digital Hemlock now available from:
UNSW Press Media Release — 8/11/2002
Digital Hemlock, award-winning teacher Tara Brabazon's new book, shows Australia's education system under siege. With record levels of tertiary students, funding crises, and the corporatisation of education, online education is being embraced at an incredible rate by our universities.But will Australia's education system become another tech wreck on the dot com highway?
In her new book, Tara Brabazon argues the case for looking beyond internet education as the answer to overcrowded lecture theatres. "The list of high profile universities that welcomed the dot com educational initiative and have been burned by it is growing".
"Students quite rightly want 'the university experience' of intense debate, social interaction, drinking, dancing and profound, life-changing learning".
Digital Hemlock takes readers into Tara's classroom, introducing her students and events that form her working days. Her single aim is to "demonstrate the importance of universities to national and cultural life".
Technology, she argues, has its place, But "we must start with teaching and learning goals, and then determine how technology can assist these functions".
"Teachers currently feel as if we are trapped in a Monty Python sketch, We are living the opening scene of The Meaning of Life where, through the 'miracle of birth', the medical administrator remains most impressed by the machine that goes ping rather than the arrival, before his eyes, of new life. Far too many administrators gravitate towards the ping, missing the magic being woven by teachers".
Tara Brabazon (http://brabazon.net) has previously written Ladies Who Lunge: Celebrating Difficult Women and Tracking the Jack: A Retracing of the Antipodes.
She is a senior lecturer in the School of Media, Communication and Culture at Murdoch University in Perth, and was the winner of the Australian Awards for University Teaching: Humanities teacher of the year, 1998.
For review copies or if you would like to interview Tara Brabazon contact Stephanie Whitelock: (02) 9664 0975 academic.press@unsw.edu.au www.unireps.com.au
Book specifications
086840781X, UNSW Press, October 2002, 235x155mm, 240pp, PB, $34.95