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After reading Rebecca Moore Howard’s “Understanding Internet Plagiarism” I found myself thinking about the website www.turnitin.com. For those who are not familiar with the site, it is a place where a user may submit text, such as a Word document, and Turnitin compares the user’s text to a vast database of text. The site then discerns whether the text in whole or in parts was plagiarized and displays a report.
It is generally understood that by submitting your text it becomes part of the massive database. This growing database is necessary to filter out plagiarism. I wondered what other possible uses the company might have for this ever-expanding collection of user-submitted original work, so I checked out the site’s http://www.turnitin.com/static/usage.html. I saw this:
Your License to Us: Unless otherwise indicated in this Site, including our Privacy Policy or in connection with one of our services, any communications or material of any kind that you e-mail, post, or transmit through the Site (excluding personally identifiable information of students and any papers submitted to the Site), including, questions, comments, suggestions, and other data and information (your “Communications”) will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary. You grant iParadigms a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, world-wide, irrevocable license to reproduce, transmit, display, disclose, and otherwise use your Communications on the Site or elsewhere for our business purposes. We are free to use any ideas, concepts, techniques, know-how in your Communications for any purpose, including, but not limited to, the development and use of products and services based on the Communications.
I underlined “excluding personally identifiable information of students and any papers submitted to the Site” because it was the sentence that stood out to me.
For now, Turnitin’s policy is to not use submitted works in the database as a means for profit – but how long will this policy be standard with databases such as these? What would it take for a hacker to access this database of ideas and thoughts? What will be the limit on the price for a third party to purchase such a varied, digital think-tank? While Turnitin follows this policy above, what about other sites that will be forced to develop in the face of growing plagiarism and piracy in the online world?
Personal information is bought and sold around the globe in the millions. What happens when original thoughts and ideas of a person become a resource? A person’s genes can be patented by corporations and used for profit, what will it mean when your words can be as well? Who will be profiting from your next big idea?
I would like to bring up and perhaps address a topic of discussion that came up in class last Friday. It was in response to the article, A Rape In Cyberspace; or How an Evil Clown, A Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society by Julian Dibble. The question that was raised by Professor Wolff dealt with an attribute of character and identity. The reaction to the “coming out” of Lonelygirl15 as being fraudulent, and the uncertainty of the validity of You Tube subscribers to be authentic, unscripted and/or unrehearsed, posed the question: How do we know if what “You Tubers”, and My Space/ Facebook users put out for the world wide web to see is a true depiction of who they really are? What makes us believe their legitimacy? Why would anyone want to paint a false portrait of who they are? Why would people want to make a false claim about themselves? Duplicity is the fact of being deceptive, dishonest, misleading or double. Why would someone want to be two-faced, showing one side of themselves to one group and another side to another group? This question leads me to note something professor Wolff brought out for class discussion, which is true; but I am not so sure if it is right. Selah! He said that we present different sides of ourselves in different spaces; whether on paper, on My Space/Facebook, with friends, among colleagues, in a place of worship, with our family, in the classroom, among strangers, wherever. This is a very true social phenomenon! Can we therefore be likened to the characters in a play in which we wear a different mask for every part or role? Did you know that this is where the word “hypocrisy” derived? Should our environment or the context in which we find ourselves define who we are, or should we seek to be the same at all times no matter who we are with or what we are doing…with no trace of duplicity or hypocrisy? I’m not totally sure if this is purely possible; but I have grappled with this issue throughout my life and have come to the personal conclusion that I want to seek to be the same at all times and in whatever context I find myself… I get tired of wearing all those masks; they’re hot, and cumbersome!
In 2002, The Bush administration instituted the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in hopes of bringing greater accountability to teachers and school districts across the nation. Not only was the intent of the NCLB Act a way to increase accountability, but also a venue to allow parents and students a choice as to which school district they would prefer to attend in hope of bringing greater equality to education. The Act’s purpose was also to help bolster the country’s reading literacy program. Much controversy surrounds or looms over whether or not the Act has stifled creativity and innovation in the classroom because of the increased drive and emphasis for students to pass nation-wide standardized tests. Through my personal observations and by talking with several practicing educators, the consensus seems to be unanimous, that the pressure “to perform” has compelled teachers to teach to the test and steals their time and energy from teaching life skills, critical thinking, and hinders them from instituting a more collaborative, “hands-on” approach to instruction. There seems to be a dichotomy brewing in these United States when it comes to our country’s education. There has been a wind of change breezing through since NCLB was enacted. On one hand…a good hand, the Act has drawn attention to the growing needs and problems facing students and school systems in America, which alternatively has turned our thinking about traditional schooling to a more progressive, collaborative one; ergo the new “buzz” term for classroom being : learning community. Since the Act, many universities have changed and revamped their program to meet the needs of a more diverse student body; not only diverse in ethnicity; but in learning style, which I personally believe is absolutely on the right track! I just do not quite understand what took place in the American educational system since the dawn of the NCLB Act. Almost simultaneously, the Act forces teachers to teach to the test, while a new movement, ideology or philosophy emerges to bring about a more collaborative, less individualistic, less competitive, more team- friendly, hands-on, practical, innovative method of learning. I find it to be quite the conundrum. It may seem as though one institution is fighting against another, but I believe that maybe, out of this struggle, a new paradigm is forming. If the two ideas would merge; the traditional view with the progressive, constructivism with direct- instruction, and “teaching to the test’ with a creative, collaborative approach, then possibly a strong, well -balanced system would grow and take shape into something formidable that will best meet the growing, changing needs of our country’s student body.
