online essay help or plagiarism

Plagiarism is a hot topic in academia today. I talk to students about it quite a bit and until recently, I supposed that most of them understood that buying a paper online counts as plagiarism. Fundamentally, I still assume that most of them know that paying for someone else to do their work for them is somehow wrong, but after looking at a couple of online essay writing sites and talking to some students, it has become clear to me that they may not understand that paying for a paper is plagiarism. Many of these sites advertise themselves as producing plagiarism free papers. They tell their potential customers that the papers they are buying are not plagiarized. They assure students that the papers they will receive are "authentic" and completely "original," even that they have been run through plagiarism software to verify their originality. And, of course, they assure students that most people buy their essay papers because they are simply too busy to write them. Next time I discuss plagiarism with a class, I know I will modify my lecture a little to include a discussion about why papers purchased from these sites are in fact plagiarized.

Oh, Wikipedia

Recently, I've seen a good deal of pop culture rifs on Wikipedia - many of them are quite funny. I've been meaning to compile a list of humorous snippets about abuse of the infamous wiki, but as of yet, the list lives only in my head - not a safe place to keep it considering how forgetful I am. I've decided to start that list here. My intention is to create a classroom worthy list of entertaining ways to talk to students about Wikipedia and about the nature of research. I should mention that I am not against the use of Wikipedia across the board. I think it can be quite helpful when used responsibly - and, in general, I am a proponent of wikis. I am hoping that these entertaining sources might help students to understand why resources like Wikipedia are not always reliable.

It seems appropriate to start this list with the parody version of the catch-all online reference, Uncyclopedia. Most, if not all, Uncyclopedia entries are fallacious and many are meant to be humorous. One should take note that since this site is an open forum parady, some of the entries may be offensive and so teachers should carefullly choose the examples they want to use in class.

The web short "Professor Wikipedia" is also an excellent and entertaining example of the hazards of wikis. "Professor Wikipedia" showcases the unreliability of wiki entries and the fact that those who post and edit entries may not be experts. Most of the video is suitable for students but there is a sexual reference towards the end that teachers may want to edit out.

"Colbert vs. Wikipedia" is a clip that aired as part of the Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert. I like this clip because Colbert talks about why people may be invested in presenting biased information. The clip itself is pretty G-rated but there is a short add-on at the end that you may opt not to show your students.

Finally, the clips that got me interested in finding humorous references to Wikipedia are from an episode of 30 Rock - there are two clips on Youtube from this episode and you would probably want to show both - clip one and clip two.

Do you know of any entertaining Wikipedia clips that could be used in the classroom? If you do, please leave a link to them in the comment section. Thanks!

Metaphors and Similes

It has been awhile since I've posted but even though I haven't been here much, issues of composition and teaching have not been far from my mind. In particular, I've been thinking a lot about the use of similes and metaphors in the classroom. In particular, I've been toying with ways to get students to think of writing as a process. Often times it seems like envisioning writing as progressive is something that we give lip service to but don't actually enforce. Sure, outlines are helpful and freewrites can be great tools when used responsibly, but at the end of the day, students are left staring at a blank paper thinking a final draft must somehow magically appear before class. And, when papers are handed back with suggestions, students still feel as though they've been criticized, not enlightened. I think part of this has to do with the way we as teachers often frame writing projects as terminal - stressing process while assigning a grade is always difficult. But even more than the A,C, or - heaven forbid - E, that lands on a student draft, it is the way that students conceptualize writing even before they get to college that makes process such a difficult idea to teach. All of this is to say, I've been thinking about ways to jar students and to challenge their expectations about what it means to write a college paper.

One idea I'm particularly excited to try out involves clay. I often think of my writing process like sculpting. I'll start with a big blob - of clay, of ideas - and slowly it will take shape. I'll have to patch up mistakes and I may find that I even need to completely restructure. It will be messy. There will be stages where what is in front of me will look nothing like what I hope to end up with - and that is okay. In fact, it is my favorite part of the process! But, eventually, the blob will take shape. I'll make my sculpture. I'll communicate my ideas. Explaining this to students doesn't seem like enough though. The analogy works for me because I love to work with clay - but this won't be the case for many students and the imagery that encourages and guides me will only be confusing and irrelevant to them....so, I've decided to try a different approach. I haven't had the chance to do this yet, but I plan to in the near future. I want to actually bring clay or play-dough into the classroom and ask students to replicate a particular image. I'm hoping that this will lead to a discussion about the nature of process - the need to do and redo, even re-envision.

My second analogy isn't at all a new one. I've been working with some students on an assignment that requires them to frame their ideas - to take an idea and read it through a context. It's a complicated skill - one that often leads to student frustration. Framing was taught to me using the analogy of a picture frame. Your idea is the picture, the context is the frame. This is all well and good, but when it comes to actually writing a paper using the technique, there can be a disconnect. Next time I teach framing, I'm going to actually have students write out their quote or idea and then literally create a frame around it using context information.

I'm excited about my ideas, but they haven't been tested in the classroom yet. I'm wondering if anyone has done anything similar to either of these activities. If you have, I'd love to hear from you and find out how it went. I'd also love to hear from anyone who uses metaphors, similes, and analogies in other ways.

For those interested, I've recently read an article about the importance of metaphor use in the classroom. You can check it out at radical pedagogy.

Audience awareness - how do we model audience awareness in the classroom?

I spent a fair amount of this morning searching for multi-modal college writing projects and found several I really like (see, for example, the celebration of student writing) but one site in particular got me thinking about how we teach - or, more specifically, how we model audience awareness. I am talking about The Converging Literacies Center (CLiC)- an online project meant to provide a space for teachers, writers, and researchers to experiment with, and share, new ways of conceptualizing literacy - and composition/rhetoric - in an attempt to make academic writing more relevant to students who may not hail from traditional academic environments. The entire project seems very interesting to me, but one thing really caught my attention as I looking through their mission statement/white paper - that as teachers we need to keep our audience in mind as we compose, lecture, and generally interact with our students. This is not a new idea but I liked the way they presented it - considering audience is something we constantly remind our students to do, but do we usually stop and reflect on how we must continually do this as well? I mean, do we talk to our students about how they function as our audience? Do we ask them how we are doing? Do we point out to them that we are constantly engaging in the activities we ask them to do? In short, how transparent are we about the fact that we are not really in a position to oversee, but more in a position to participate? In theory this is all well and good, but what does this transparency look like in a classroom? I'm not exactly sure - discussion is part of it, but how else can we become more participators and less observers? After all, isn't that what we want from our students?

fun with Wordle

This word cloud was made using Wordle, an online interactive word art tool. Word clouds are a fun and easy way to visually represent main ideas and can be used as brainstorming tools and presentation visuals, among other things. Check out the article Top 20 Uses of Wordle by Rodd Lucier for some fun suggestions about how you can use Wordle in your class.