Comments on: Should essay prompts be google-proof?

By: Suzie

Suzie — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:36:43 +0000

I agree that “don’t Google” (or use Wikipedia, Sparknotes, or other sites) isn’t particularly educational these days. But I’m also telling my T.Ed. students that the “Write about themes in _________” essay is pretty much dead. For that matter, any generic essay prompt is dead — it’s too easy for students to find pre-fab papers or stitch … See Moresomething together from sites like Sparknotes without doing much reading or thinking. We need to ask students to synthesize, and to produce less-traditional products.

When I was a high school English teacher, I learned that one step toward “plagiarize-proofing” my assignments was to have specific specs that had to do with what we’d learned, done, or discussed in class, and to require information from varied sources, including primary sources, and to ask for less traditional genres, such as travel brochures, plays, films, certain types of charts, etc.

But I also learned to require that some of the work be done in class, and I got a mini-grant for Turnitin.com.

By: james

james — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:40:54 +0000

i remember copying out of an encyclopedia whenever i would write a report on a topic…this was probably around 4th grade or so. i didn’t read the info, i didn’t learn the info, i just copied it and pasted it. what i cared about at that moment had more to do with what ramp i could build for my bike rather than what content i was putting on my paper. now 4th graders can use keyboard shortcuts and get to building that ramp sooner.

By: monica

monica — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:15:38 +0000

I agree, John, except I think that what we know is still very important. By easing access to information, technology has allowed us to now, as you said, focus on the connections we make between information sources, rather than the finding of those sources. We bring knowledge to our information search tasks that is essential to how we ultimately incorporate the new information we find.

By: John Sowash

John Sowash — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:21:09 +0000

Thanks for the link and for sharing your thoughts on the idea of “Google Proofing” assignments.

Technology has changed the role of education in that what you know isn’t as important as what you can do with what you know. This idea becomes more accurate as a student moves from elementary to middle school to high school to an undergrad program, and then on to graduate work. It’s the connections between things that create value.