Keeping it real with Rory Auskerry - August 2007

I have never been very keen on books, much to the disappointment of my parents both of whom love reading. When I was a kid I used to read Biggles stories but mostly if I was reading anything it would be genuine manuals for pilots or articles in Pilot magazines. This was because of my growing obsession to become a helicopter pilot which I had had since the age of about 8. I still plan to get my pilots licence at some stage as it continues to excite me immensely, despite my new goal of becoming a radio broadcaster.

Anyway, students are required to read academic books about the subject they are studying to enable them to write informed essays about their subject. This was always going to be a sticking point for me due to my dislike of reading. I’m pleased to say that I have passed the history of broadcasting exam and all my modules for this year which did include two 2000 word essays on the topic of popular culture. The point to all this lies in the internet and the secondary school education system. I agree that research and background knowledge is very important and I admit that books are an obvious source of reliable information. However, I am disappointed that it’s taken me until half way through my first year at university to discover some of the other, perhaps more user friendly sources of information available on the internet, particularly through Google.

The story started when I walked over the river to get some books to help me write one of the essays. It was over a week before the deadline so I was not expecting any difficulty in getting the books I needed from our reading list but I was wrong. I couldn’t get a singe one of them and as a result went home slightly concerned with only a couple of vaguely relevant books that I’d picked up just to stop the trip being wasted. When I explained this to one of my second year mates he immediately said. “Why don’t you use Google?” I do of course use Google for just about everything from finding song lyrics to settling arguments over obscure issues. I hadn’t until this point ever heard of Google Books or Google Scholar.

It’s worth checking out your self but basically Scholar is a section of Google dedicated to articles, websites, journals, and essays etc all of which have been vetted as containing genuine scientific or bona fide information, while Google books is a section of the search engine devoted solely to providing either the whole or selected parts of a huge range of books. It even tells you all the information about the book that is necessary in order to reference the source correctly. This means you can search key words, find a relevant book (some of which were actually on my reading list), read the parts which are most relevant, copy the text into your essay and reference the text correctly in your bibliography, all much quicker, and without having the effort of going to the library and carting books around.

I strongly believe that if there is technology there which can help you then why not make full use of it. What I struggle to understand is why I have never been told about this service before, either at school or university. I did computing at Standard Grade and enjoyed it. However, I can now see that a lot of the things I learned on the course have been almost useless to me and more importantly, things I wish I had been taught I was never even introduced to. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing teachers as I’m well aware that they are obliged to teach a curriculum set by the SQA and the Scottish Executive. Even so, why was I taught about programming, databases, and every intricate detail of spreadsheets instead of how to get the best from the internet, build websites, set up online banking or use Photoshop for example? Most of the things I was taught at school to do with computers was out of date and has not proved very useful. After all, computing is an area which is moving faster than most and therefore even more emphasis should be put on ensuring that it is as up to date as possible.

But I’m pleased to hear that things are changing. Senior staff at the OIC Education Department have told me a brand knew curriculum is being worked on and it should be fully in use by 2009. It will remove many of the rigid guide lines of the current system and replace them with something much more flexible allowing teachers and pupils to have more say over what is taught. Maybe even this does not go far enough. Perhaps pupils should be encouraged to give feedback to their school about their courses and how useful what they have learned has been once they have spent some time away so that the authorities can fine tune what the next generation is taught to make it as relevant as possible. I think at the very least there should be some serious debate about these issues.

I have spent most of July in Auskerry which has been excellent. I’m going to be busy this weekend as five of my friends from Uni are coming up to visit tomorrow. I’m taking them out to Auskerry on Monday for a couple of days so I hope the weather is nice as we are meant to be camping and with a bit of luck we will get out in the boat for some Mackerel, and maybe get a few creels out too.

To finish off I might as well make a school related suggestion, even if it’s a little tongue in cheek. I remember one 6th year assembly when I suggested the school motto should be modernized because most of my year didn’t know what ‘Si Deus Nobiscum’ means. If it must be in Latin, how about changing it to something like ‘Vade Atque Vale’ because although there was never a phrase exactly like it in Latin, it’s as close as I can get to… Keep It Real.