Found the discussion on plagarism and essay writing essay. I wasn't aware of the severity of the problem in High School and college. I think rubrics are the closest thing to "perfect' we can get. In elementary school, rubrics are a great way to pre teach the expectations of the writing assignment. It gives the students a guide as to what you are expecting them to write about, and lets them focus their writing on the points.
I'm curious to hear Dr. Newberry's reasons for not liking turnitin.
As an elementary school teacher, I was also surprised by the prevalence of plagiarism. Since I rarely send writing home to be completed (it gets lost quite frequently), I do not encounter this problem. I do not recall much in the way of plagiarism in my personal experience in high school and college, but the world is now a different place thanks to the internet.
ReplyDelete--Baber
I also teach elementary school. I don't see a lot of plagarism at the elementary level, but I know it has been filtering down. I agree with Baber that kids today have so much more access to information with the advent of the Internet. I know that with the students I teach, sometimes it's so much easier to copy something then have their own line of thought. We so need to help these kids think for themselves.
ReplyDeleteI have always tried to be careful to watch for plagiarism but have found that the problem isn't with the ease of copy/pasting it, the problem is that the students don't see a problem with it. I use the example of them creating a project and I erase their name and put mine on it and turn it in. They don't like that but still can't see that is what they are doing. Another problem is that many of my students have no imagination so they just reproduce something they have seen.
ReplyDeleteI posted my reasons for not liking Turnitin on the discussion board.
ReplyDeleteMy concerns are based on a review of the way Turnitin works and things I've seen happen.
I was at a Turnitin demonstration and the presenter asked if anyone had a paper they would like to check. A member of the audience supplied a student's paper on a flash drive which was submitted under the presenter's name.
I read about journals that used Turnitin to check submissions.
I have spoken to representatives from Turnitin who confirmed that they knew of cases where student work was incorrectly tagged. He assured me that this was correctable, if it is knowable.