To start…
Welcome to my blog. As you may or may not be able to tell from my title, I am a “The Office” fan (which is a show I greatly recommend). I am interested in discussing issues that arise when teaching language arts to high school students and hearing the opinions of others. Although it is early in the semester, I believe my topic will focus on the grading system and how it affects a student’s amount of effort within a class. Also, I am interested in plagiarism and the most effective way to overcome the problem without sending the wrong message to students. I have the education feeds from The New York Times and MSNBC. I choose these two because they have important information regarding education, but I am sure I will add more feeds as I search for more information on my topic. Overall, this blogging experience should be fun and I wanted to add a little clip from “The Office” for you to enjoy.
Matt
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First of all great title to your blog and excellent video. I don’t get a chance to catch much TV these days but when I am flipping through the channels and I see The Office I always stop because it is sure to make me laugh. I have no idea what night its on, maybe you can clue me in on that next class.
I like both of your ideas for subjects of your blog. I think it is interesting that we have have a class that requires us to get feeds from sources via RSS (great tool) and then you talk about Plagarism. With more technology academic honesty becomes more and more of an issue. Ways of detecting plagarism are becoming more advanced with tools such as Turnitin. Unintentionally plagarising becomes more prevavlent. Anyway I thought I would give you this link which I thought might help a little.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/~wrp103/class/cheating.html
Your blog will be interesting to read and I can’t wait to read what you think about grading.
I think your blog is going to be interesting, especially to see what direction or stance you take on grading and plagarism.I am a HUGE The Office fan, so I loved the video you posted.
-Kristen
P.S. “That’s what she said.” =)
Most often the idea that addressing plagiarism can send the wrong message to students never crosses my mind. However, last semester a professor changed my opinion of plagiarism. I got the impression that the professor did not trust anyone. It was made clear that all of the papers would be googled and those who plagiarized would be caught. I was pretty offended. I understand that the first class requires that the professor revisit the policies of plagiarism, but what ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Maybe that only applies to the courtroom (although some would disagree if it even applies there). I completely understand that plagiarism is a reality in every classroom, but I expected some trust. By announcing his assumption that everyone was a cheater, he created discomfort within the classroom. He valued policing and formed an environment tainted with distrust. Personally, that is the ideal classroom. I am curious to hear more of your opinions. You have a very interesting topic and I am looking forward to more of your posts (and I love The Office).
Matt,
I also enjoy the office too (hilarious clip), though you might keep this non-academic stuff in a separate category or separate blog. In any case, you’re off to a good start here. Be sure to add a complete class blogroll sometime soon.
It sounds like you’re thinking about both plagiarism and assessment/grading. Really either of these issues would work well. Plagiarism is a big problem in literature courses because of online essay mills and sites like Spark Notes, so this might generate more interesting articles.