An educated mind is an opened mind. An opened mind is a liberal mind. Teachers don't have to intend to create liberals, it happens naturally.
On the inside:Cheating?Links to other education stories.As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss.
Door's Open...
Cheating
It's coming to the end of the semester. As in every semester, that means that students are submitting assignments which were due ages ago in the hopes that I will still grade them (which I do...but do I charge a late penalty). So while my Thursday evening class in Visual Basic programming was having lab time to work on their final projects (and, in some cases, completing overdue assignments), I was visiting my various venues for electronic submission of work to download what I would have to grade this weekend. I've tried to wean them away from sending me work through email since that fills up my mailbox to rapidly, rendering it unavailable for the submission of excuses. So most of my students use the Blackboard digital drop box to submit items outside of class. Anyway, I was scouring the various drop boxes and discovered a couple of PowerPoints, a couple of spreadsheet assignments, and the odd java program or two.
A strange thing happened. Upon printing out the speadsheets, I discovered that one of them had identification inside the file that differed from the name attached to the submission. Yes, dear readers, we had the most blatant example of cheating I've had in recent years. A student submitted work as her own without removing the name of the person who had actually done the work.
I know I'm not the only teacher anywhere who is encountering this age old problem. Cheating is rampant. I've seen studies that report somewhere between 70% and 90% students admit to cheating in the past year. Add to that the percentage of students who have cheated but would never admit to it, and there are almost no students left. I know honest students have to exist, because I can honestly say that I never once cheated as a student, and I refuse to believe that I am or was unique.
So how did this come to pass? Of course, we can claim that it's because all they have to do is pay attention to the news to find role models for the behavior. Cheating gets you rich, famous, and even elected to high office.
I'm afraid I've become somewhat jaded about it in recent years. It annoys me immensely because of the time and effort I have to spend tracking down the few who are actually good at it. It annoys me that I have to argue with students who are so incredibly bad at cheating that the village idiot could see that cheating has taken place. Mostly it annoys me because the students think I am so stupid that I won't notice or so lazy that I won't do anything about it. The sad thing is that for them to still think this is the case, it must have been the case at some time in the past.
I have added discussions of ethics to all my syllabi and built it into lesson plans. I really think I've made a bit of progress. But not enough.
I'll be hanging around most of the day, actively waiting for your comments (actually, I'll be at home grading stuff and preparing classes), so at least one person will be here to discuss whatever anyone wants to discuss.
The Not-so-many Rules
No general bashing of administrators, politicians, etc, just on general principles. If you want to bash them, have a point and a plan.No bitching about students unless your talking about what you are going to do to alleviate the problems you think the students have.Introductions are encouraged, but not essential.I have no investment in hosting the Teacher's Lounge. If someone else thinks they can and wants to do it better, cool. I just want the space. And not for teachers only, but respecting the general theme of teaching and learning.Teacher's Lounge can be "slow blogging" if you want it to be. You don't get quality writing if you demand velocity. It doesn't have to be the case that something posted today is dead by tomorrow. I would like it to eventually be up and active 24/7, but that may have to wait until I have developed an independent blog site.
Every Saturday I'll post a clean slate, between 10am and 11am EST.