Posts Tagged ‘encarta’

Farewell, Encarta | Hello, Critical Thinking

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

The Interwebz have been buzzing with the news for a month now – Microsoft is going to discontinue their Encarta Encyclopedia.  I, personally, do not use the software/web interface, but I did way back in the olden days of 2000.  While living in Eastern Europe, some kind person from the United States donated a laptop to my mother for my education, and along with that laptop came 6 beautiful, colorful discs with Encarta scrolled across them. I spent many hours hunched over the small screen, scrolling through articles, reading about different countries I had lived in (just so I could see the pictures and not feel homesick), and absorbing information in general.  My favorite feature was their 360 degree “virtual tours” of various places.  Alcatraz became my favorite; I would spent hours freaking myself out by making up different stories to go with my “wanderings” around Alcatraz.  Ah, to be a kid again.

Microsoft had this to say about Encarta’s demise:

Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft’s goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today’s consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business.

Indeed, we do “seek and consume information in considerably different ways”.  Take Wikipedia, for example.  Even The Wall Street Journal announced Encarta’s demise with the headline, “Microsoft to Shut Encarta as Free Sites Alter Market”.  That’s one of the draws of Wikipedia – it is free, and it has tons of articles on topics ranging from extremely academic to mind-blowingly unimportant (but are important to some, of course).  Encarta, as far as I could tell, was like the traditional encyclopedia.  I would not be able to find higher math help in it, nor…on a completely different plane, the latest news on Flight of the Conchords.

But, is access to so much information really that great?  I think so, but I also think that critical thinking and discernment are needed when filtering through the oodles of information presented.  Christopher Dawson of ZDNet apparently agrees, as seen from this quote from The Wired Campus:

The demise of the encyclopedia, he argues, should simply galvanize educators into teaching the research skills students need to wade through “brutally powerful knowledge sources” like Wikipedia and Google. “The encyclopedia is dead,” Mr. Dawson writes. “Long live critical thinking.”

Long live critical thinking, indeed.  If any of my students read this, now you know why I assign you those research projects and try to get you to articulate your thoughts in class.

Articles of Interest on this topic and/or critical thinking:

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