Technology

Yesterday I realised just how much we rely on the internet. Unfortunately we started our Saturday by discovering that we had no internet connection at Mawson Lakes (or any of the other campuses). We could browse our University pages but could not access anything outside. I sat wondering what I could do as I could not answer any of the queries from patrons sent through QuestionPoint because we could not access the website. It also put a stop to the research I was going to do for a patron using the databases as we could not access them. I went to demonstrate to a student how to access an ebook woops that's right no internet. At first students were coming up to the desk to enquire about the internet problem and you could just see the look of fear in their eyes (we let people know as they walked in after that). That is a bit unfair all the students were really good and took the bad news very well. We did have further problems as the calls started coming in to let us know that from outside the Uni you could not access any Uni websites. These students were a little bit more frantic. Thank goodness for the IT guys who came to the rescue and by about 3pm we had our internet back hooray. This problem has started me thinking about how much students (and the rest of us) rely on the internet to find information. I found some great articles on this subject (yes I found them online) one called '"Of Course it’s True; I Saw it on the Internet!” Critical thinking in the internet era' by Leah Graham and P. Takis Metaxas it was quite interesting and discusses how many students use the internet as their primary method of researching. Anyway I have now realised how much I take my internet access for granted; I will be giving my modem a kiss goodnight from now on to keep in its goodbooks.