🚀 go-pugleaf

Dear Diane, and Nettrainers,

I thought we were heading for a four legs good, two legs bad discussion on
the
.edu versus the world debate, but we have cleared the mud a bit there, thanks.

Thanks Brian for your reference
http://www.mitretek.org/hiti/showcase/documents/criteria.html
and Shawn Andery for your analytical suggestions.

It seems to me that we have hit a clear Catch-22 or Chicken and the Egg
conundrum situation.  One has to have sufficient wisdom/knowledge/education
to suss out the weak sites, recognise the frauds and inaccuracies and have
gained the skill of recognising when one has come to a good site. We
encourage students to use the net to enhance knowledge etc before they have
acquired discrimination/wisdom etc etc ... which should come first? I think
we should be careful of being overly protective. I don'think I necessarily
agree with Edmund Burke's dictum that "the first right of man is to be
protected against the consequences of his own stupidity" [quoted by
McCluahan in War and Peace in the Global Village]

BUT

Different sites require different assessment skills. Clearly the medical
site which was posted has different criteria. An error here may be
potentially life threatening. In my area errors may not be life threatening
but may be seditious or perverted for this world, and threatening to a
students personal belief system and his/her own personal soteriological
belief or convictions for the next (if there is one). On the other hand, I
am giving internet tutorials next week to anthropology classes studying
paganism and regardless of sites' religious themes these are going to be
seen as phenomena suitable for sociological study and they will not seen as
a threat to anyones personal religiousness.

There have been, on the other hand, sites which actively seek to pervert
personal belief. I am thinking of some examples which appear to be Islamic,
but are actually very clever sites of disinformation created by those who
have hidden political or belief agendas and who are waging an war of
information attrition against one of the major world religions. One does
need to make sure that an off-line authority is willing and able to give
advice on Internet material, as our lecturers do willingly - and most
recommend that good old-fashioned books are consulted first, before the
Internet is looked at. This may be anathema in the States of course, but at
least in this way there is some other criteria known of which will help the
student decide on whether a site has any academic merit.

On the other hand there are academically recognised sites of acknowledged
excellence, and if pages are linked from these sites then I always presume
that they have academic merit and are of good or at least reasonable
provenance - one particular site is the Journal of Buddhist Ethics for
example -
http://jbe.la.psu.edu/
(I notice this site is .edu!)

PS  incidentally
-  ".ac" is the UK equivalent of  ".edu"
also
- if any one wants good starting points for religious studies subjects let
me know and I'll do my best to oblige.

Jen Cairns
Postgraduate Student [and experienced software trainer etc]
Department of Religious Studies
University of Wales, Lampeter
Ceredigion, UK
SA48 7ED