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
