SoCal Fires

Thought this was quite interesting… follow the link!

*update on the 38,000 acre fire in Southern California

Boy Admits to Starting one SoCal Fire

-provided by CNN.com

Sad Week

It has been a very sad week for college students both here at home in the Rowan community and South Carolina.  I hope all the loved ones of these students have the strength to deal with their loss. A sad remider of how we all need to be constantly aware of our surroundings.

Plagarism

Plagarism has been and will probably always be an issue for educators and others as well.  The problem is, that it is becoming more and more convienent and easy to plagarize and worse cut and paste.  I agree with the authors that teachers need to become more technically aware of how to defend against this problem,  I also, think that teachers need to do a better job of teahing students how to do proper research.  Sometimes I think students are confused by the fine line of gathering research and plagarizing.  There are websites out there for teachers to check papers against a database of written work, but there lies another issue, that just because something is not a published piece of work does not make it any less of an issue.  So many people are self publishing their writing or ideas through the use of blogs such as this and various other ways.  The web offers so many experiences and opportunities some good and some not so good and because websites like Napster.com or Bestessays.com pop up everyday and so quickly makes it very difficult to fight.   

Plagiarism

I completely agree that plagiarism is easier because of all the sources found on the Internet.  It’s actually hard not to plagiarize because of all the sources out there on the Internet. Plagiarism can also be caught easier by teachers, in my opinion.  It’s easier for teachers to search for students’ papers on-line rather than to think of books or other sources that the student got the essay or sentence from.  I completely agree with Howard when she speaks of fixing the problem by adjusting the policies and having teachers become more technology and computer savy.  Teachers need to keep up with technology to keep up with their students.  Some teachers today don’t even know how to use the Internet which I think should be taught to all teachers.  I think that this is an important and useful tool for teachers to have.  I don’t think that teachers should rely on programs to detect plaiarism because what if the program detects something in a paper that is like another source but really isn’t plagarized?  I think that the teachers should improve their teacher pedagogy rather than relying on these sites to do the work for them.  It’s obvious when a student didn’t write the paper themselves and teachers should be able to detect this.  They should get to know the style of the students’ writing so then it is easier for them to detect themselves if the student plagiarized or not.  I think that the Internet is a great tool for teachers to use and know but I think that the Internet should not be used to detect plagiarism.  It should be detected by the teacher and the teacher alone.

Plagiarism

For my response I will be focusing on Rebecca Moore Howard’s, Understand “Internet Plagiarism”. I understand that plagiarism has become more and more popular (for lack of a better word), but I agree with Howard when she says the way to go about fixing this is to modify plagiarism policies and to acquire teachers with more knowledge of the virtual world to create a more effective learning environment for the students. I can see others’ arguments that the internet created an easier means of accessing information and research, which in turn brought more plagiarism into education, but weren’t there cases of plagiarism way before the internet came about??

Howard talks about how more teachers are relying on “plagiarism-detection programs” to grade their students’ papers. For one of my classes I had to actually submit a paper to Turnitin.com. After the program looked through my paper, I received an email of my paper that had been checked. Obviously I did not plagiarize, and luckily my paper came back clean. But what if the program thinks you did plagiarize and you didn’t?? Or what if you accidentally took ideas from some other essay or took some information from work that you had never looked at before in your life?? I just feel that these programs are not perfected enough to be used to grade students’ papers. It is usually obvious if a student’s paper is not their own work, and teachers should be able to detect this for themselves. Hence, my agreement with Howard, that teacher pedagogy needs to be improved.

As I was reading through this article, I just kept thinking why would anyone want or need to plagiarize, or even think about purchasing a paper online?? To me, that is just asking to get in trouble. I would never trust a stranger to give me a decent paper in exchange for $70. I think that these sites that sell papers and essays need to be shut down, no ifs-ands-or buts about it. Why is it okay for these sites to be accessible, better yet- why do they exist? To me, plagiarism is foreign. Not once have I thought about using someone else’s words, knowledge, or research without paraphrasing, citing, or quoting. It is easier to do your own work than to take someone else’s and suffer the consequences.

A Tragedy…

Last night around 9 pm a Rowan University student was hit, stabbed, and robbed by 3 male suspects. The victim was approached by the 3 males near the Xpress Foodmart. The police suspect that the 3 males were not Rowan students. No update on the status of the victim, besides that he is being taken care of in the hospital.

I hope these 3 suspects are caught….as for the victim, get well and stay strong. We’re all thinking of you.

I can not believe that such a crime would occur near Rowan’s Campus, we need to stop this before it gets out of hand.

Virtual Lives… are they okay??

I just need to say that I think it is so odd that people are able to live “second lives” through the virtual world. The first article I read was Joshua Davis’ “The Secret World of Lonelygirl”. I thought this reading was quite interesting. I had never heard of Lonelygirl15 until this class, and when our professor first mentioned her I just figured she was a real girl who created video blogs about her life. Who would have thought that Bree was not real?!? How is it okay for a person to live a double life? Is it ethical? Obviously Bree is not as bad as Mr. Bungle was from Julia Dibbell’s “A Rape in Cyberspace”, but it is still a little out there; I guess people do it all the time in the real world, like men who have 3 different wives who all live in different countries.

Now, back to the Lonelygirl15 article… I think the producers of this internet series are geniuses because in who knows how many years, the internet will probably be the only source of entertainment (we should call it “intertainment”…maybe I should copyright that). They have so much passion for the series, and that is what people need if they want to accomplish something. I’m sure they did not think when they first came up with this idea that a steady 300,000 people would be viewing the videos of Bree every week. If they stick to it, they may be the first to start the multi-million dollar, possibly billion like Zuckerberg, internet entertainment series.

Julia Dibbell’s “A Rape in Cyberspace” made me pretty speechless. Just the way everyone went about punishing this guy. My point of view is that something more should have been done, like an actual sentence; but then again this all happened in the cyber-world. I’m still weirded out by this whole second life concept. I could never imagine creating an account…I am quite content with my real life, thank you very much.

 

How does everyone else feel about this???

Second Life

Ok so one of my favorite shows on tv is The Office and how funny is that I read about the CSI show doing an episode on Second Life and then later I am watching The Office and there is Dwight on his Second Life page.  They are really advertising

2nd Life?!?!

In last class we were discussing 2nd life and how it works. I found it ironic that a show that I watch every Wednesday, CSI New York, just so happened to be based on 2nd life!! A woman, who had a 2nd life account, was killed so someone could steal her 2nd life “identity” to kill the governer. If you would like to watch the episode, or skim through it click the link below. Scroll down to the episode “Down the Rabbit Hole” on 10/24/2007. *note the 2nd life advertisement as well.

I just thought it was funny that for the past week I have been hearing so much about 2nd life; on the news, in class, and then on CSI!

CSI:NY

Ok so I take my two pugs with me just about everywhere I go but this is a bit extreme!