Monday, February 6, 2012

2/6/12

                John Barrie was interested in paper mills, which were websites where students could get papers from online for a small fee, and turn them in as their own work. John Barrie had an idea. He decided to use technology and use it to catch kids who were cheating on their assignments. John Barrie made a for-profit company called iParadigms. His website is used for hundreds of U.S High schools and universities. When a school licenses his service the faculty make accounts on his service. The teachers tell the students to turn in digital copies of their work to the service. Then the papers go through databases and they see who has used the same paper. He says that 85% of the papers turned in are exact replicas of the ones online. Another 13% comes from old papers used by other students.
                I think that Mr. Barrie is very smart and is doing the same thing. When you plagiarize, the person who actually spent time in doing their research doesn’t get any credit, which is wrong. I think if you’re actually going to take the initiative to go to college, you need to do what’s expected of you rather than cheat and feel bad. When you do things you feel accomplished, but when you cheat, you don’t feel good about it. Plagiarism is not okay and it shouldn’t be motivated. When you have a lot of things going on and are stressed, honestly, you think about it but you got to have some responsibility and then you’ll be looked up to. You won’t be looked down on or have a bad reputation. I think that definitely the student needs to sit there with the teacher watching and do the report. Then they most likely won’t do it again, who wants there teacher hovering over them? Anyways, I think institutions take it seriously because, if you cheat it won’t take you anywhere in life, and it won’t prepare you for future jobs and business opportunities. At the University of Michigan, international students (if caught plagiarizing) cant register for full time classes, will have to go to another school, or even possibly have to leave the U.S. Plagiarism could result in suspension from the school for several terms, permanent expulsion, and the students degree could be revoked. I think plagiarism is wrong.  Also on  http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/7506 it says that UM actually uses Turnitin.com.