The Rogue Scholar

Make That Paper the Best You Can

One of our work-study students wanted her own account on TurnItIn, even though her professor was not in the habit of using that database. I couldn't figure out why, so I asked.

"It's so that I can test my papers for plagairism before I hand them to the professor."

That confused me. So I asked why.

"Well, better safe than sorry. I just want to make sure, that's all."

TurnItIn is a massively useful database, and since its recent announcement that it would be joining ProQuest, has become even more useful. The press release described the venture thus:

Turnitin, the global leader in originality checking and plagiarism prevention, today announced a partnership with ProQuest, an information company serving the global research community, to include more than 300,000 dissertations and theses from 2008 to the present in the Turnitin comparison database. The agreement enhances Turnitin's repository of scholarly content while extending its massive plagiarism-checking database, which now tops 20 billion current and archived web pages, 200 million student papers and more than 110 million articles from scholarly journals.

There is no way that being able to scour a couple of hundred million documents in the search for plagiarised content can be a bad thing per se.  However, it was making this student a little tense.

So, I told her, here's the thing. It's admirable that you care about this enough to be proactive in dealing with it. But let's talk for a minute about what plagiarism actually is. Okay?

"Okay," she said.

You see, I said, plagiarism is not when I study a set of papers and describe their contents in my work. That's more like paraphrasing. A literature review, which your paper will almost certainly need, is going to need that. It has to, to show the professor that you know what's going on in the subject you've chosen to write about. And I attribute the articles I found, to their authors then list them in my references, and it's all good. If two people write on the same subject, even assuming that they are writing the same paper, the chances of one person's paper matching the other's exactly is just about zero. It's possible, but highly unlikely.

Plagiarism is different. That's when I take the contents of your paper, and paste it into my own with the intention of passing it off as my own work. No attribution, no references, no nothing. The wording of multiple paragraphs as well as the order in which those paragraphs appear will be identical. That is what TurnItIn looks for.

"I see," she said.

And if it really is that important for you to use TurnItIn, I said,  then I can create a a join password for you. But I think it makes more sense for you to just work on that paper until it's the best one you can possibly write. Also, make sure that your professor know who you are and what you're up to. If you have an idea for a paper, or a strategy for writing you're not sure of, ask her for advice.

"Well, that's part of it," she said. "Mostly, I find that my writing style changes depending on whether I really care about the subject or not."

That can be a drag, I agreed. The trick, if there is a trick, is to try and write about what you care about. If you absolutely have no choice, that's one thing, but if you can choose your subject matter, so much the better. Make that paper the best you can.

That's the trick our students need to learn. Make that paper the best you can.

I Am Losing Faith In Capitalism

I am losing faith in capitalism. Some will say I'm late to this realization. Others will say that I'm just plain wrong. But know this as I know it: when things go wrong, they do not automatically right themselves. Many times, things go wronger and wronger until in the end everything is totally fucked up.

We are royally screwed, says Chris Hedges. He makes a great big point and he doesn't mince words. Our civilization is dying because we have lost our souls in a maelstrom of bullshit, petty politics, and consumerism. I haven't always believed that capitalism was necessarily destructive but now I'm barely hanging on to the idea that it had more utility than not. I am losing faith.

While I've always identified with capitalism, I've always had a giant socialist streak, but if you've seen my past May Day posts, you know that. The trouble with socialism or any other ism as a solution to the country's problems is that Americans deep down are not into collective solutions, even when they make sense. Even with 75 years of history proving that they can be beneficial. We just plain suck at this. We hate to trust anyone but ourselves and even then we lack the imagination to come up with alternative scenarios where one can, say, have an economy without jobs, or enacting living wages for people who do have jobs.

We're smart enough to do better, but our hearts aren't in it. We're way too happy with a doomsday that we can see to imagine a paradise that we can't.

In the meantime, there will be actions. Confrontations. Occupations of public grounds and landmarks. Count on some of them to be unruly, and count on the police to act like an invading army in some cases. These things are attempts  by people who care to save our collective soul. That alone is worth praising. If you can, get out and help them. Save yourself. Save all of us.

Happy International Workers' Day, damn it.

 

 

Rich White Guy To Poor Black Kid: Get Technical

Gene Marks, a contributor to Forbes Magazine, (herein known by the phrase Rich White Guy, or RWG) offered some advice to an archtypical Poor Black Kid (PBK) last week regarding how to educate himself out of the ghetto by means of modern technology.  I'm not going to discuss his qualifications for giving advice of this type (none), nor the possibility that he has no idea what he's talking about (significant), nor the barely concealed privilege and racism of his remarks. That's been done very well elsewhere.

I want to talk about his advice to "get technical."

If I was a poor black kid I would get technical.  I would learn software.  I would learn how to write code.  I would seek out courses in my high school that teaches these skills or figure out where to learn more online.  I would study on my own.  I would make sure my writing and communication skills stay polished.

Okay. That's a pretty general account of technical work. I'm not sure what "learning software" means: Learning to use Office 2010 well? Learning to write HTML? XML? Perl? Javascript? C++?  All have different applications, and learning to code competently in one won't necessarily help you with the others. High school (and college) classes in these subjects are limited by the quality of the slowest student--I found that out for myself studying XML at Queens College while pursuing my MLS. I got the concepts and the structure, but many of my classmates didn't. We stopped well short of where I'd hoped we'd be and I finished the studying on my own outside of class.

So, Poor Black Kid (PBK) will need textbooks and a lot of time to sit down in a quiet place where he won't be interrupted to study. That such places in urban settings can be few and far between doesn't seem to have occurred to RWG. The same goes for PBK's polishing his written communication skills. Want to learn to write well? Read several hundred books, several thousand articles, and write a thousand words or more a day for a year. That's how it's done. Time, space, and solitude are what's needed. Public libraries would be good spaces to do this in if they weren't being de-funded left and right.

Part the second:

And I would use the technology available to me as a student.  I know a few school teachers and they tell me that many inner city parents usually have or can afford cheap computers and internet service nowadays.  That because (and sadly) it’s oftentimes a necessary thing to keep their kids safe at home than on the streets.  And libraries and schools have computers available too.  Computers can be purchased cheaply at outlets like TigerDirect and Dell’s Outlet.  Professional organizations like accountants and architects often offer used computers from their members, sometimes at no cost at all.

At first glance this is not bad advice, but again, it misses the point. Three things stand out to me as a guy who sold computers and the components that went into them for years. First, schools and libraries (not to mention school libraries) in neighborhoods where Poor Black Kids go to school are likely to be poorly funded, staffed and maintained. The value of the equipment they have is directly proportional to the amount of money spent, which, as I said, is not likely to be high. So the equipment this kid is meant to educate himself on is likely to be old and semi-functional, or non-functional at least part of the time.

Second, what he calls "cheap" computers generally don't last more than a couple of years. That's why they are cheap. If you spent several thousand dollars at Dell to get the good stuff, then pay for a top-tier service contract on top of that, you get real customer service. If you didn't, you get sent to Dell Hell where you get to spend a fortune in phone charges listening to some guy with an ESL accent insist that you should turn your PC off and then on again. Third, yes, professional organizations often offer perks to their members but Poor Black Kid is obviously not a member of these fraternities yet, so this tidbit falls a bit flat.

If I was a poor black kid I’d use the free technology available to help me study.  I’d become expert at Google Scholar.   I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes to help me understand books.  I’d watch relevant teachings on Academic Earth, TED and the Khan Academy.  (I say relevant because some of these lectures may not be related to my work or too advanced for my age. But there are plenty of videos on these sites that are suitable to my studies and would help me stand out.)  I would also, when possible, get my books for free at Project Gutenberg and learn how to do research at the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia to help me with my studies.

Now we get serious. It's time for Tech Talk.

"Free" is a relative term. Air and water are free until you need someone (say, the government) to guarantee it's safe to breathe and drink, or unless you want to take it with you in a big tank. That takes money. Technology in all its myriad forms, applications, and performances, takes real money to make happen. What RWG doesn't seem to get is this: what he calls free technology is only available because thousands of people who produce it worked long hours with no pay then made a conscious choice to give it away it for free. Textbooks--the mainstay of higher education in the industrialized world--are never free, and they are what the education industry thrives on: text book sales. (Forbes, being a publisher of some note, surely understands this.)

So. Does PBK have to pay for the software? No. But will he have to scrape up $80 for a 6-inch Kindle or more for a Netbook or laptop to make use of this online material? You bet your booty.

Anyway, here's an experiment for you: send your application to harvard with the words "Self educated by means of free technology" scrawled on it instead of a high school transcript, and then call them a week later and see how you did. If you're accepted, I'll eat a bug.

 I don't have a problem with Google Scholar per se (I'm unsure if it will ever live up to the hype but that's another post), but in my experience both as a teacher and student, services like Spark Notes and Cliff Notes do more to wreck kids' ability to read a book than anything else. You won't understand the book any better, you just get exposed to a slim cross-section of it. That's not reading. That's cramming for an exam. Not a habit PBK should be cultivating this early in his academic career. Sources like TED and KhanAcademy are worthwhile, or one could be really ambitious and take a look at MIT's Open Courseware website.

I love Project Gutenberg. How can you not like a source of 36,000 free ebooks for download to a PC or portable device? The books are high-quality items all produced by bona fide publishers, and are made available through the effort of thousands of volunteers. The trouble is that these books are not generally textbooks. Classics, yes, and lots of them (here's the top 100 titles by download), but Business, Science, and Math classes don't use the classics. They use textbooks. Those are expensive and not generally available on line except in the most expensive universities.

The CIA World Fact Book, also isn't a bad resource. It's not the most easily accessible almanac in the world but, yes, it is complete, as long as you remember that its data are limited to descriptions of countries. Wikipedia, on the other hand is not a primary resource. For anything. Ever. Why? It's written and edited by absolutely everyone regardless of background, education, or research. Some articles are clearly better (or worse) than others, but using Wikipedia as a primary source is a sure ticket to an F from any competent teacher.

That said, one thing Wikipedia can be extremely useful for is to show you where else to look for source material. Scan the article, then go to the reference links. Those will lead you to better sources.

I would use homework tools like Backpack, and Diigo to help me store and share my work with other classmates.  I would use Skype to study with other students who also want to do well in my school.  I would take advantage of study websites like Evernote, Study Rails, Flashcard Machine, Quizlet, and free online calculators.

I won't argue with any of this on a point-for-point basis, as they are good suggestions for people who make continual and substantive use of online files. But--and you knew there'd be a but--Diigo,  Backpack, Evernote and all those other good suggestions require all participants to have a PC of his or her own. In poor families, you're more likely to see one device shared among several people, or none at all. Again, Poor Black Kid is more likely to be relying on crappy equipment and spotty online access than not. These well-meant ideas don't work so well under those conditions.

I don't know what exactly our Rich White Guy thought he was thinking when he wrote this. None of it this is bad advice as far as it goes. But it seems inappropriate to me. It assumes that Poor Black Kids go to schools that are equally well funded and equipped as Rich White Kids' schools. That is not the case. It hasn't been the case for decades. Up to date textbooks, equipment, competent and well-paid teachers, and the time and opportunity to study are what make mediocre students into good ones and good students into great ones.

So . . . yes. Medicore White Guy is technically correct even as he misses (or obfuscates) the larger point: Poor Black Kid can use technology to help educate himself out of the inner city. Possibly even into a job in Big White Sky Building. But the tech he probably has access to will break often, take a lot longer to work, and the experience will suck.

But hey, at least it's possible, right?

Librarians Feel the Squeeze in Jobs and Salaries

This is not the most welcome news on a Monday morning, but it is consistent with what I've been hearing elsewhere:

For 2010 graduates, the past year presented challenges in finding professional jobs with adequate living wages; however, it also offered unexpected opportunities and sounded positive notes despite a battered economy. A total 1,789 LIS graduates responded to LJ’s annual Placements & Salaries Survey, down from last year but still representing a solid 37.3% of the approximately 4790 2010 graduates from the 38 participating schools. In another sign of the times, fewer LIS schools participated, and the ones that did once again reported that graduation rates are down (8.4% below 2009), ranging from 2% to almost 50% lower.

Average starting salaries were basically flat, improving by less than 1% to $42,556—which could be seen as good news, given the economy, but is nonetheless bad news for a profession that is already widely considered to be underpaid. On the upside, the gender gap narrowed significantly to a 3.7% difference (from 8.3%) between wages for women and men. And the new graduate unemployment rate went down slightly, with 6.7% reporting they were still unemployed compared to 7.8% in 2009.

And to think that a mere two years ago, Librarian was considered a job with one of the best prospects by U.S. News & World Reports. Apparently not.

 

 

Live From Liberty Park: Democracy in Action

I just found the embed codes for Livestream's Global Revolution channel which is doing a live webcam feed from the goings on in Liberty Park:

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

 

A Monday Wake-Up Call

Welcome to Banned Book Week. I'll be posting about that in a bit, but first, a brief assignment, should you be inclined to accept it.

Take this photo which has been making the rounds on FaceBook and Google+:

Print out 1,000 of these, go to book stores in your area and stick them into the pages of every bible you see on the shelf. All of them. New Testament, Torah, Koran, Book of Mormon, all of them. You will be doing Christians all over the United States an enormous service.

First, you will be reminding the faithful who remember who and what Jesus said about the pursuit of excessive wealth and power (bad) and humility and charity (good). That's some basic reinforcement of a generally positive idea: a good thing.

Second, you will be reminding those who have taken less positive variants of this fascinating faith (let's refer to them collectively as Power Seekers*) and turned them into commands, that they are not living up to their savior's ideals (bad).

Third, by alerting those of us who are not Christians of those positive ideals by their savior, you will be reminding us that genuine Christians exist and have influence over their brothers and sisters. You will be reminding us that it's not Christianity which is necessarily the problem so much as some Christians who misread the words printed in their bibles and decide that wealth and power are valid ends in themselves.

If nothing else, share this meme around a bit and let's see what happens.

 

*I'm thinking specifically of Tea Partiers and people who internalize the writings of Tim LaHaye, but the field is wide open for additions to this group.

Want a Real 9-11 Memorial? Donate Blood

We donated blood that day ten years ago. At least, we tried to.

This was in the late afternoon, around five or six pm. This was after my wife and I had met up at the entrance to the Queensborough Bridge at 59th street. It was after her freak out upon watching the second tower fall into dust, after my freak out upon hearing that the towers had in fact fallen down since her place of work was only a few blocks away.

This was after we walked across the bridge to Queens Plaza, where a horde of people fleeing Manhattan were allowed into the subway for free. We took the G train to 63rd Drive and walked home, to our apartment. We were safe. We were fine. We were good.

Then we tuned the television on, and watched the news and we stopped being fine. We were struck with the urgent need to do something and in the big picture, librarians aren't generally thought of as first responders. We figured we'd donate blood at Elmhurst Hospital which was the nearest blood center. We gathered my sister and her room-mate, Gene, and we left to be useful.

Sometimes sharing the simplest of things, like blood, or platelets is the most productive use of your time.

So if you really give half a hump about your country or the people who live in it, then here's an idea: instead of the bullshit politics or trading one-up stories with your buddies about who was the bigger hero on that day--how about you save a life and head to the closest blood center and bleed into a bag for half an hour. You will do more to help your fellow Americans than invading all the Muslim countries in the world. Trust me on that.

Sadly, we did not actually donate blood that afternoon. We did get to the hospital, and we did fill out the forms and get tested. My form was rejected because I'd recently gotten a new tattoo. My sister was rejected for anemia. Gene had a cold, so he got sent home. My wife passed the paperwork and the blood test, but her rolling veins made a donation impractical. Four attempts to do good and four failures.

Life is like that sometimes.

President Obama Finally Sounds Like a Democrat

Our President finally sounds like a Democrat and for that, I am grateful.

Last night's speech was a good one: read it here, or better still, watch it.

The only thing that worries me--other than the fact that 461 billion dollars is not much to work with given a 15 trillion dollar economy--is the fact that it took the Dems 3 years to come up with a jobs bill that actually had the word "jobs" in it.

Dems, listen to a man who interned at a PR firm in his youth. It's all about the story behind the story. In this case, the story is that Obama wants you to have a job. The story behind the story is a disfunctional economic policy. Believe it or not, people will get that if you say it often enough.

Remember above all that hearts and minds do not win themselves and the Republicans have a 40-year head-start on you. They are greedy, lying, cheating, remorseless cretins but they have their story down pat (government is bad. Really, really bad. Deadly, even. To you! ) and they stick to it.

Do better.

Speaking of the story behind the story: something else that's been making the rounds of news these past few days is a report by a former GOP Congressional staffer, appropriately titled Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult. Absolutely required reading to get a handle on what the disloyal opposition does, why and how.

In other news, a few of us at chez Frater are planning to start a small press. I'll write more on that in a future post, after we've though about it a little more.

For today: Happy Friday.

Quote of Note

"I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries."

---Carl Sagan

Lost and Found

Remember this Kinks song, from 1985? Remember the circumstances (Hurricane Gloria vs. NYC)?

I thought not. Neither did I, and I owe massive thanks to Slacktivist for reminding me:

Waiting for the hurricane to hit New York City

Somebody said it's hit the bay
this is the nitty gritty.
And all the bag ladies better put their acts together

We're near the eye of the storm
this is really heavy weather.

We were lost and found

In the nick of time while the ship was going down.
We were lost and found

Just in time with the hurricane crossing the coast line.
We were lost and found
just in time.

The thing is bigger than the both of us

it's gonna put us in our place.
We were lost and found
iust in time

now we've got no time to waste.

They're putting up the barricades

Because the hurricane is heading up this way.
[ From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/k/kinks-lyrics/lost-and-found-lyrics.html  ]
So won't you come in from the cold and the pouring rain?
And the old sea do@ says: shiver me timbers.
The sky's gone blac and it's like the dead of winter.
We were lost and found in the pouring rain

When the hurricane swept across the coast line.

This thing is bigger than the both of us

It's gonna pvt us in our place.
We're gonna say what really matters
When you see that storm stare us in the face.

We were lost and found

And we beat the fear
we came through the storm.
Now it all seems clear
we were lost and found

Standing here
looking at the new frontier.
Lost and found
just in time

With the hurricane crossing the coast line.