Blog Journal 2: Originality in Writing

     Microsoft Word has become a standard in education. Once we stopped learning how to physically write, we began learning how to well, write. For the sake of convenience, we started being required to type out our writing assignments so our teachers could actually read them. Once we started writing longer papers, we started learning how to format them. Until college, I only really used Word for English assignments, however, in my Academic Success class that I took last year, we learned a few ways to use it as a study tool for other classes as well. I find that in my college classes, quite a few teachers use Word documents for their lectures and a lot of teachers and professors I've had use it to write their quizzes and exams.

     Something that we also learn about as we write lengthier papers on Word is Copyright. It has been ingrained into our brains to never ever plagiarize anything since elementary school. We first learned about plagiarism as copying homework in elementary school, then it developed into plagiarizing information for papers. I think because of how much my former teachers have discussed this, I have this constant thought at the back of my mind when I write anything. I find that since we started using software to check for originality and plagiarism, I rethink every sentence I type. I read it over and over and try to rewrite it in a way that I don't feel other have written it, just to avoid having a high percentage on Turnitin. As a teacher, I would definitely use Turnitin as a resource to not only check for plagiarism, but to make my students think about what it is that they are writing. It is kind of a scare-tactic, but it is effective. I would also encourage my students to write about things they actually care about. It is so much easier to write 5 pages about something you love and the students won't feel pressured to just pull text from any sources to meet the word count.

     Since we have this unlimited access to content online, it is so much easier to use copyrighted content. That is why it is so essential to use Turnitin and to make the students understand how serious copyright-infringement is. With this access to the internet, we also have a power to connect with one another on social media. A serious issue that comes with this ability is cyberbullying. Students don't understand the impact that their words can have on someone and they tend to say things they normally wouldn't since they can hide behind a username and computer screen. I think the best way to approach this issue in a classroom setting is to assign discussion board posts and teach them about how to present themselves online. Another issue that Turnitin helps with is Academic Honesty, but I feel like the best way to solve that issue is to make the assignments less of a punishment for students. In high school and even now, the only times I've really seen any students turn to being academically dishonest is when they are being overworked in that class or other classes, or when they feel like the assignment is a punishment of sorts. In English classes, the best way to remove that feeling is to not have students write an absurd amount of papers and to let them write about something they are passionate about. Writing is a creative outlet and by limiting students to specific topics and even structures makes them dread doing it. I remember writing a research paper about an author my Junior year of high school and I was so excited about it because the author I had chosen was a strong woman of color. My excitement and motivation behind the paper vanished when our teacher had us bring index cards to class and put information on the cards for the "Body 1 paragraph" and etc. She had us write the skeleton of the sentences and just fill in the blank. When I tried to rewrite it with my style of academic writing, I was scolded and told that I needed to use exactly the sentence structure and word choices she provided. At that point, I felt like we were being forced into plagiarizing essentially and we weren't actually writing the paper.