Don’s 632 Blog

Today in class we looked at “Image Blender” which is an inexpensive image manipulation software package.  We also discussed plagiarism in reports and papers that students turn in.  We talked some about “Turnitin” which can be used for a fee to check for plagiarism.  One of the students in the class has used Turnitin at a local university.  They began to use it because so many of the papers being turned in by the students contained parts that had been copied right from some one else’s paper without using quotes and referencing the quote.  In this case the students have to submit their own papers to Turnitin and submit that report to their instructor.  Its use has eliminated most of the problems.

Each of us in the class shared our ideas about what we were planning on doing for our final projects and were able to get some positive feedback from the instructor and other students.  I filled out my web site evaluation form.  I did both sites on the same form.

I read the article by E. Hargittai on “The Digital Divide and What to Do About It”.  I asked the instructor if this was a serious paper.  It would not be a major concern of mine to find that I was on the wrong side of the digital divide.  I know that having digital technologies and knowing how to use them well can be a major asset.  I just think that there are more pressing concerns in the world.  I don’t see knowledge as an end in itself.  A person with much knowledge and little wisdom is an educated fool.  (Just my opinion.)

The digital divide was once thought of in terms of just being a binary problem.  In order words some people have access to digital technologies and some people do not.  This article focused on digital inequality across different segments of the population, and across different areas of the world.  The question that many are trying to answer is whether or not the gaps between population groups are growing at the same time that digital technology use is increasing within all those same population groups.

I also read the article by Bolkan called “Avoid the Plague, Tips and Tricks for Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism”.  The author pointed out some of the ethical failings of plagiarism such as laziness, theft, coveting and lying.  Some studies have shown that more than half of college undergraduates admit to engaging in plagiarism.

Many educators blame the internet for the rise in plagiarism.  Many papers and reports can be accessed by the public from the internet.  Reports and papers can be purchased from the many “paper mills” that advertise on the internet.

One of the ways educators can combat plagiarism is to make the writing assignments with a narrower focus so papers will not be available on the subject from the internet.  The are ways of detecting plagiarism such as:  knowing a student’s writing style, doing a Google search on parts of a paper, and using tools like Turnitin.  Most schools have policies in place to punish students caught in the act of plagiarism, but there can be no effective punitive policy without strong deterrence and detection policies.