Turnitin.com

This past weekend at my class at Drake, we discussed the issue of academic dishonesty. We read an article that talked about the issues with cheating and how much of a problem it is becoming in schools, especially at the secondary level. In the article there was a website called turnitin.com. This website is for teachers, and probably mostly for teachers at the secondary level. On this website, teachers may put in students' work and the website will cross-reference the writing and check for chunks of texts that appear in other written pieces that already exist. The website checks automatically for plagiarism! Another great thing about it is once a teacher puts a paper into the system on the website, it is in the "bank." Meaning, if a student tries to turn in a paper that a friend and/or classmate has already done, it will show up when the teacher plugs it into the site. There were a few teachers in the class that use this website in their district. They all spoke very highly of it and said they think it's a great idea. I too think that this website is a great idea. I do think that it is a good idea to be honest with students and let them know from the very beginning the importance of academic honesty and that you expect them to follow the rules. They need to be aware that you will be checking them just to be sure. It's sad that these types of websites even have to exist, but I think it's a good thing they do at this point.