Day Thirteen

Lucky thirteen. Not much to report today. My students are writing in-class essays. Why in-class you ask? When I let them write their essays at home, there's always the chance that they'll find information online.  Fortunately, most kids don't know how easy it is for teachers to check to see if a paper contains plagiarized work. Here's how it works:

As you read an essay, certain big words occasionally come up that seem a bit uncharacteristic of a high school student. The old way to handle this is to simply ask the student to come up to your desk, where you quiz them on the meaning of the word. This of course is messy, not to mention embarrassing for the student...And potentially you because sometimes the student does know what the word means!

But we don't have to worry about that anymore because it's the 21st Century!

Here's the new way.

Same situation. A student uses "big words" and you suspect him of plagiarism. Simply go to google and type in the sentence. Often, the article pops right up. This way you simply show the student the evidence, and it's done to done done done.

I just had to do this the other day with a student. and his face became rather pallid (see blog entry, Day Eleven).

Thank you internet!

And that in a nutshell is why I still like teaching.

Signing off.

Birds-Eye