Franklin Schargel’s Blog

Student Plagiarism and How to Prevent It

Plagiarism is going social, according to Turnitin.com, which found that one-third of plagiarized material in student papers can be traced to social networking, content sharing, or question-and-answer websites.

Turnitin.com offers software that checks student papers against a vast database of prior works and the internet at large, looking for matches that can indicate possible plagiarism. An analysis of the top sources of matched content flagged by the software reveals a significant shift in the last few years, the company says””from so-called “term paper mills” to social sites and homework help sites.

While social networking and content sharing sites accounted for the highest percentage of all matched content, one-quarter of all matched materials came from legitimate educational websites, the company said””many of which use “.org” or “.gov” domain names. These sites often include pages dedicated to helping students complete their homework or prepare for tests.

The results of the company’s analysis reveal a change in habits as students increasingly turn to online sources for help with class assignments. They also indicate a need for students to learn better research skills, including what makes a source legitimate and how to cite their sources properly.

This is not meant to be an endorsement of Turnitin.com

Source: eClassroom News <[email protected]>

Teaching The Same Material in Less Time

The Irene-Wakonda School District in South Dakota has joined the list of school districts which have shortened the school calendar by eliminating school on Fridays. This was done to save money. South Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature slashed aid to schools this spring by 6.6 percent to help close a $127 million budget gap. One quarter of all school districts have moved to some form of abbreviated school schedule. According to one study, more than 120 school districts, mostly in the West, now use four-day weeks.

The district will add 30 minutes to each day and in elementary schools will shorten physical education and recess.

I understand the need to save money but the budget cuts strike at the purpose of education – teaching and learning. As one person wrote to me, “States are eating the seed corn.” But children don’t vote and therefore become easier victims. But what happens to a parent who works a five day week and has to take care of child on Friday? What happens to a child who is in middle or high school who doesn’t have school on Friday? What do they do with their time? Doesn’t the politicians care? Obviously not!

Student Free Speech

A Federal Appeals Court in Pennsylvania has ruled that students cannot be disciplined at school for put parodies of their principals on MySpace on their home computers. “The postings, however led or offensive, will not likely cause significant disruptions at school and are therefore protected under prior Supreme Court case law.

Would the reverse be true? If school people write about their students on their home computers would the courts uphold their first amendment rights?

Free Learning From The Computer

There are a variety of websites that offer free learning for both students and teachers. Below are the names of a few:

AcademicEarth.org – Offers more than 1,500 video lectures by professors from Harvard, Yale and other top universities on topics as diverse as art, architecture, history and astronomy.

ITunes University (download a free copy of Itunes) – The site features more than 350,000 video lectures from universities and museums around the world.

KhanAcademy.org – has more than 21,000 plus video lectures conducted in short segments by Salman Khan.

YouTube.com – most students have viewed videos from this website. But educators can use the short segments to teach history, art, etc.

History.com and Biography.com – both of these television channels offer free television shows which will enhance classroom instruction.

Teaching About Sex In Schools

For the first time in nearly two decades, students in New York City’s public middle and high schools will be required to take sex-education classes beginning this school year, using a curriculum that includes lessons on how to use a condom and the appropriate age for sexual activity. According to city statistics, African-American and Latino teenagers teenagers are far more likely than their white counterparts to have unplanned pregnancies and contract sexually-transmitted diseases.

Nationwide, one in four teenagers between 2006 and 2008 learned about abstinence without receiving any instruction in schools about contraceptive methods, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health. As of January, 20 states and the District of Columbia mandated sex and H.I.V. education in schools.

New York City’s new mandate goes beyond the state’s requirement that middle and high school students take one semester of health education classes. The city’s mandate calls for schools to teach a semester of sex education in 6th or 7th grade, and again in 9th or 10th grade. At the same time, knowing that many teenagers are sexually active, the city administration wants to teach them about safe sex in the hopes of reducing pregnancy, disease and dropouts.

The new classes, which will be coeducational, could be incorporated into existing health education classes, so principals will not have to scramble to find additional instructional time. The classes would include a mix of lectures, perhaps using statistics to show that while middle school students might brag about having sex, not many of them actually do; group discussions about, for example, why teenagers are often resistant to condoms; and role-playing exercises that might include techniques to fend off unwanted advances.

High schools in New York have been distributing condoms for more than 20 years. In the new sex-education classes, teachers will describe how to use them, and why.

The statistics about increased sexual activity and unwanted pregnancies cannot be disputed. However, isn’t this the realm of parents? And if parents do not want to teach it, is this the responsibility of schools? It seems that every time parents take a step back, schools are expected to take a step forward. Parents used to be responsible for teaching their children about driving instruction, swimming, stopping drug and alcohol abuse, not smoking, etc. It is now the school’s responsibility. We do not have the training, or the time to take on additional responsibilities. Nor with the added burden of additional budget cuts, do schools have the funding to pay for additional positions.

My Latest Huffington Post Blog

I am proud to announce that the Huffington Post has posted my latest blog entitled “Who is driving educational reform:

You can access it through: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/franklin-schargel/educational-reform_b_976710.html

It’s also permanently listed in your author archive:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/franklin-schargel/

Students Do Not Know American History

American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released on Tuesday, with most fourth graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean War.

Over all, 20 percent of fourth graders, 17 percent of eighth graders and 12 percent of high school seniors demonstrated proficiency on the exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Federal officials said they were encouraged by a slight increase in eighth-grade scores since the last history test, in 2006. But even those gains offered little to celebrate, because, for example, fewer than a third of eighth graders could answer even a “seemingly easy question” asking them to identify an important advantage American forces had over the British during the Revolution, the government’s statement on the results said.

Diane Ravitch, an education historian who was invited by the national assessment’s governing board to review the results, said she was particularly disturbed by the fact that only 2 percent of 12th graders correctly answered a question concerning Brown v. Board of Education, which she called “very likely the most important decision” of the United States Supreme Court in the past seven decades.

Students were given an excerpt including the passage “We conclude that in the field of public education, separate but equal has no place, separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” and were asked what social problem the 1954 ruling was supposed to correct.

“The answer was right in front of them,” Ms. Ravitch said. “This is alarming.”

The tests were given last spring to a representative sample of 7,000 fourth graders, 11,800 eighth graders and 12,400 12th graders nationwide. History is one of eight subjects “” the others are math, reading, science, writing, civics, geography and economics “” covered by the assessment program, which is also known as the Nation’s Report Card. The board that oversees the program defines three achievement levels for each test: “basic” denotes partial mastery of a subject; “proficient” represents solid academic performance and a demonstration of competency over challenging subject matter; and “advanced” means superior performance.

If history is American students’ worst subject, economics is their best: 42 percent of high school seniors were deemed proficient in the 2006 economics test, a larger proportion than in any other subject over the last decade. But Jack Buckley, commissioner of the statistical center at the Department of Education that carries out the tests, said on Monday that because the assessments in each subject were prepared and administered independently, it was not really fair to compare results across subjects.

On the 2010 history test, the proportion of students scoring at or above proficiency rose among fourth graders to 20 percent from 18 percent in 2006, held at 17 percent among eighth graders, and fell to 12 percent from 13 percent among high school seniors.

On the test’s 500-point scale, average fourth- and eighth-grade scores each increased three points since 2006. But officials said only the eighth-grade increase, to 266 in 2010 from 263 in 2006, was statistically significant. Average 12th-grade scores dropped, to 288 in 2010 from 290 in 2006.

While changes in the overall averages were microscopic, there was significant upward movement among the lowest-performing students “” those in the 10th percentile “” in fourth and eighth grades and a narrowing of the racial achievement gap at all levels. On average, for instance, white eighth-grade students scored 274 on the latest test, 21 points higher than Hispanic students and 23 points above black students; in 2006, white students outperformed Hispanic students by 23 points and black students by 29 points.

History advocates contend that students’ poor showing on the tests underlines neglect shown to the subject by federal and state policy makers, especially since the 2002 No Child Left Behind act began requiring schools to raise scores in math and reading but in no other subject. The federal accountability law, the advocates say, has given schools and teachers an incentive to spend less time on history and other subjects.

“History is very much being shortchanged,” said Linda K. Salvucci, a history professor in San Antonio who is chairwoman-elect of the National Council for History Education.

Many teacher-education programs, Ms. Salvucci said, also contribute to the problem by encouraging aspiring teachers to seek certification in social studies, rather than in history. “They think they’ll be more versatile, that they can teach civics, government, whatever,” she said. “But they’re not prepared to teach history.”

Things Babies Born In 2011 Will Never Know.

The most popular thing I have ever posted on this website is “25 Things Which Will be Extinct in 25 years.” I do not know who sent it to me. If I did I would give them credit. This was posted by xenohistorian

Things are changing very rapidly. Educators will have difficulty explaining the following to their students.

1. VCRs & VHS tapes
2. Travel agents
3. Separation between work life and personal life
4. Forgetting
5. Bookstores
6. Watches
7. Phone sex via 1-900 numbers
8. Maps
9. Calling people on the phone (as opposed to texting)
10. Classified ads in newspapers
11. Dial-up Internet
12. Encyclopedias on the shelf
13. CDs
14. Landline Phones
15. Film and film cameras
16. Yellow pages and address books
17. Catalogs
18. Fax machines
19. Wires
20. Hand-written letters