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Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students' papers.



Karen,

It isn't as clear cut as I suggest. The  Fourth Circuit of Appeal  t A.V. et
al. v. iParadigms, LLC, 562 F.3d 630 (4th Cir. 2009) found that TurnitIn use
of student papers falls under fair use. I attach the ruling.

I just disagree. Every paper submitted to TurnitIn is added to their
database to check against future works. TurnItIn then charges schools to use
the service. IMHO they are then making a buck off the work of the students
and I do not see how this fits the idea of fair use. It seems like a case of
for-profit gain.

 I just disagree with the courts. I don't know all the specifics but I think
the court ruled that students agree to the TOS which may include allowing
TurnItIn to use their work.

So, no TurnItIn does not own the copyright but they are free to make a
profit off the work of others without giving credit to the authors.

Greg

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Karen Heckert <heckertkrs@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Turnitin owns the copyright to all the papers I wrote for those classes?
> The
> rights to all the papers written by all the students that are forced to use
> it?
> That's bizarre. Outrageous. How can a professor compel a student to give up
> the
> rights to their own work? I sincerely hope you're mistaken.
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Greg Mcverry <jgregmcverry@gmail.com>
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Mon, January 10, 2011 9:25:42 AM
> Subject: Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students'
> papers.
>
> I have to agree with Jenna wholeheartedly. While blatant cheating as
> described by the "Shadow Scholar" does cross some ethical boundaries,
> students are ill-prepared for academic writing. Jenna gave a wonderful
> account of these issues in higher education. The line, "But we do our
> students a deep and lasting injustice by placing the blame solely on their
> shoulders," really resonated. The probelm, however, starts much earlier in
> education.
>
> We, as educators, simply do not do justice when it comes to teaching
> students to use multiple sources in primary and secondary school.
>
> I hear it all the time when providing professional development to teachers
> in the US. When I start talking about student combining ideas from online
> sources a teacher (usually high school) shouts out, "The middle school
> doesn't teach students to cite sources." To me that is the crux of the
> problem. Educators equate a complex intertextual process of constructing
> new
> ideas from old with the act of putting a comma in the right place using APA
> or MLA.
>
> Instead of addressing the issue teachers look to software such as TurnitIn.
> While the courts and I disagree I have issue with students having to
> unwillingly give up copyright of their work to TurnitIn which then owns the
> rights to that paper, makes a profit off the work, and offers the original
> author no credit. It seems like a business model built on plagiarism to
> catch plagiarism. I have to agree with those that comment taking a sentence
> (find the one with the semicolon) and throwing it into Google.
>
> I think though, instead of trying to catch plagiarism we need to teach
> students to use multiple sources and introduce academic discourses much
> earlier in education. It is the only way to stop the cycle of Colleges
> claiming high schools are to blame and high schools laying the blame at the
> doors of middle schools.
>
> Greg
>
> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 9:02 AM, Jenna McWilliams <jennamcjenna@gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > I have loved reading this thread over the last several days. It's an
> issue
> > that interests me enormously, and one that I've thought about a lot. So
> > pardon the lengthy ramblings below....
> >
> > A few iterations of myself ago, I was a college composition and
> literature
> > instructor. Anyone who’s taught this particular category of courses knows
> > that cheating is an enormous issue: take the ramped-up pressure on young
> > people to set themselves apart from their peers in an era that has seen
> the
> > highest rate of college enrollment in the history of America; add to that
> > the increasingly fuzzy borders around what counts as ‘plagiarism’ in this
> > mixed up, multimodal, shareable world; and toss in a generation of
> students
> > who have received little guidance, if any, from adults on navigating
> issues
> > of plagiarism, copyright, appropriation and sharing of ideas and content.
> >
> > What you get: students who either don’t know or don’t care about why
> > universities care so much about the ethics of plagiarism.
> >
> > But we do our students a deep and lasting injustice by placing the blame
> > solely on their shoulders. One reason students plagiarize is that it’s
> easy:
> > Writing instructors often distribute the same essay assignments semester
> > after semester; they use essay prompts that are so worn, and so widely
> used,
> > that even students who honestly intend to just find supporting resources
> for
> > their essays online may end up having their entire papers mapped out for
> > them. (cf. Is Willy Loman a tragic hero?; Take a position on gay
> marriage.)
> > If we want our students to leave our classes and universities as
> > independent, creative thinkers, then we need to offer them opportunities
> to
> > think and write about things other than the stuff that every student in
> the
> > history of college has already had to slog through.
> >
> > Here’s the two-pronged approach I started to implement right before I
> left
> > teaching in favor of gainful employment and health insurance (I lived in
> > Massachusetts at the time, was an adjunct instructor and therefore not
> > offered health insurance, and could not afford to purchase state-mandated
> > insurance on an annual income that stayed safely below $20,000–even with
> the
> > part-time job I worked on top of teaching a full course load every
> > semester.): I developed writing assignments that a.) required students to
> > draft original writing and b.) offered a way in to conversations about
> the
> > difference between ethical appropriation and plagiarism. Here’s one thing
> I
> > tried: I asked students to draft a creative rewrite of a source text–they
> > could write a prequel, add a scene into the text, or rewrite or extend
> the
> > ending. Then they were required to analyze how their rewrite changed the
> > story, and in so doing, to demonstrate an understanding of the themes and
> > characters of the text. I only had time to try this once, but if I were
> to
> > do it again I would also have students think and write about the
> > appropriation / plagiarism issue as it relates to this assignment. I
> don’t
> > think it’s a perfect assignment by any means, and students who were
> > determined to cheat could still find a way to succeed, but it’s certainly
> > better–and more interesting–than the hackneyed old prompts that end up
> being
> > so easy to lift from teh Google.
> >
> > Being more creative instructors doesn’t solve the cheating issue, but
> it’s
> > certainly better than the strange alternative of simply adding more
> policing
> > to our learning environments. Did you see that NYTimes article about
> Caveon,
> > a security program that detects cheating by comparing students’ responses
> on
> > standardized tests (
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/education/28cheat.html?_r=1)?
> > Apparently, lots of students are using their phones to give each other
> the
> > answers to test questions. Caveon also mines the internet for sites where
> > students discuss their answers on high-stakes tests like the LSAT.
> > Presumably, it notifies the makers of the test, who then remove the
> flagged
> > items from the next version.
> >
> > As you can imagine, this is a lucrative endeavor: "As tests are
> > increasingly important in education — used to determine graduation,
> graduate
> > school admission and, the latest, merit pay and tenure for teachers —
> > business has been good for Caveon, a company that uses “data forensics”
> to
> > catch cheats, billing itself as the only independent test security outfit
> in
> > the country."
> >
> > Well, at least students find out early what it’s like to live in a
> country
> > that generally believes that the best defense is a good offense: That
> > catching and punishing wrongdoers will deter others from going down the
> > wrong path. Never let the facts get in the way of a good theory: We’ll
> keep
> > passing ridiculously harsh drug laws even though they don’t deter people
> > from buying, selling, and using illegal drugs. Our politicians, supported
> by
> > right-wing pundits, will resist extending unemployment benefits in the
> worst
> > economic recession we’ve seen since the Great Depression. Why? Because
> > they’ve decided, in direct contradiction of the evidence, that America’s
> 15
> > million unemployed adults are lazy bums who just need a swift kick in the
> > ass.
> >
> > That’s the world our students are headed for, so they might as well learn
> > the lesson early that it’s a world that prefers punishment over dialogue,
> > short-term fixes instead of enduring solutions, and using bandaids to fix
> > gaping wounds.
> >
> > Look: students cheat on standardized tests because they know that the
> > stakes are really effing high. They cheat because they don’t see any
> reason
> > not to–because it’s not clear why ‘authentic’ achievement on a
> > multiple-choice exam is even worth striving for. They cheat because they
> > don’t see any connection between the contents of those tests and the
> subject
> > areas that matter to them as human beings. They cheat because the tests
> are
> > stupid but the scores are important.
> >
> > So instead of fixing a broken system with an overreliance on standardized
> > tests, we just add more cops–this time, in the form of computer programs.
> > Sure, that should work just fine. Just like it worked to add more
> proctors
> > to testing locations. Just like it worked to collect students’ cellphones
> > before they began the exam. Just like it worked to guard test questions
> like
> > they were matters of national security.
> >
> > The low road is easier to walk, but it doesn’t offer much opportunity for
> > scaling mountains. In the coming decade, I would like to see us take the
> > higher road a little more frequently.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ~~
> >
> > Jenna McWilliams
> > Learning Sciences Program, Indiana University
> > ~
> > http://www.jennamcwilliams.com
> > http://twitter.com/jennamcjenna
> >
> > ~
> > jenmcwil@indiana.edu
> > jennamcjenna@gmail.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Jan 10, 2011, at 8:50 AM, Larry Purss wrote:
> >
> >  I don't want to take a position on this topic, but was curious about
> what
> >> seems a contradiction between issues of "control and trust" in a manner
> >> similar to Engstrom's article on the use of technology in middle schools
> >> and
> >> putting computers in the hallway.  I wonder if the concepts  "control"
> and
> >> "trust" are primary or basic constructs when discussing institutional
> >> structures or containers.  I was wondering when reading Engstrom's
> article
> >> if the terms control and trust were explanatory terms within  2nd person
> >> actor narratives or if Engstrom abstracted these terms as explanatory
> 3rd
> >> person narratives of what he observed in the middle school environment.
> >>  Do
> >> others see a contradiction or tension in the discussion of plagarism or
> is
> >> it a clear case of civic virtue?
> >>
> >> Larry
> >>
> >> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 12:40 AM, Rod Parker-Rees <
> >> R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >>  And I can also confirm that this extends to submissions to peer
> reviewed
> >>> journals, too. I have had the experience of receiving a paper which was
> >>> noticeably more lucid than the email which accompanied it, a quick bit
> of
> >>> googling revealed that the paper was the work of a student at a UK
> >>> university where the submitter had been working as a visiting academic.
> >>>
> >>> Rod
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> > __________________________________________
> > _____
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
>
>
>
> --
> J. Gregory McVerry
> Neag Fellow
> University of Connecticut
> New Literacies Research Lab
> http://newliteracies.uconn.edu
> twitter: jgmac1106
>
>
> " [Champions] have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be
> stronger than the skill." -Ali
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-- 
J. Gregory McVerry
Neag Fellow
University of Connecticut
New Literacies Research Lab
http://newliteracies.uconn.edu
twitter: jgmac1106


" [Champions] have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be
stronger than the skill." -Ali

Attachment: AV_v_iParadigms.pdf
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