Problems with Plagiarism

DO NOT COPY!? The images (below) are typical of the negative assumptions about the impact of digital technologies on research, and assumptions about how many educators assume their students will use them. These negative assumptions litter the internet with their tones of moral crisis (just Google image search 'plagiarism'). The problem is this advice is just impractical, a generation raised to assume the mutability of the screen as 'normal' is not one that is likely to take this advice to heart, instead they will rely on copy paste, but assume that this means that they are now cheating. I don't believe this has to be the case, I believe we can use copy and paste as a powerful part of the process of researching. I believe we should adopt a more constructive approach to copying, a constructive plagiarism.

Obviously I'm not advocating plagiarism, but we need to keep our eyes on the actual purpose of the research, the learning, not on outdated (copy+paste=plagiarism) methodologies and principles which are counter-productive, and counterintuitive. I say ‘21st Century’ because if ever there was a mode of operation that needed dragging into this century it is the models and modes of academic writing.

20th Century responses to 21st Century Possibilities

When we ask students to research a topic, the underlying assumption behind traditional guidance around plagiarism is that our students are going to construct a completely original piece of writing, or create a piece of work which does not contain any content that could be found in any other format that has ever been written or published since the dawn of time. Right from the outset this should strike any reasonable minded person as an absolutely ludicrous proposition, as the oft quoted Newton said himself "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.", the point being, as is also reiterated in the good book by Solomon Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun". Of course, the assumption in this context is that the primary mode of communication is text (because it generally is. Why? That’s another conversation), but you need look no further than the outstanding video series on Vimeo "Everything is a Remix" to see a powerful rationale for the kind of practices that I call 'constructive plagiarism'.

http://everythingisaremix.info

An Alternative Approach... 

We need to embrace the ways digital technologies can and should transform how our students research, particularly exploring the mutability of digital technologies. The negative assumptions behind the castigation of students who copy+paste is that protestors assume that that is where the process ends, rather than where the process begins.

The fact is that even our most supposedly original ideas and thoughts are a remixing of ideas, experiences, and content that we have encountered throughout our lifetimes and that we have either consciously or unconsciously internalised, remixed, reinterpreted and finally re-presented as our own original work. As David Woo says, “no true knowledge outside people: people construct individual meaning and try to agree on meaning in talking with each other”. So to set students the task of producing a wholly original piece of work is really an exercise in futility, at worst you are asking them to do the impossible, at best you're asking them to take other people's ideas, internalise them and re-present them as if they were their own, which is really nothing short of a form of plagiarism, albeit one where they make some effort to at least vaguely cite the original content.

Of course this is something we are likely to penalise them for doing, as the clearer they make the sources of their ideas, the more likely it is that their teacher will be able to discover their extent of their plagiarism. Now there is great deal more to this last point that I can't really get into here, suffice it to say that we need to build an intrinsic sense of trust, the alternative is a nightmarish ‘damned if you do, damned if you don't’ scenario where everyone loses. Students who are feel incriminated by exploiting the affordances of digital tools, such as their use of copy/paste, who then abandon any attempt at appropriate practice and start faking their citations, or skipping them completely for fear that if they leave a trail of evidence they are just increasing the likelihood that they will be ‘caught’.

Another common issue is students end up unsupported with an ‘all or nothing’ stance, ie you MUST write it all in isolation, not an empty page, if you copy and paste anything, that’s it, you’re effectively categorised as a cheat. So we end up with patchwork plagiarism of the worst kind, not because the students have corrupt intentions or motivations, but because no one is teaching them how to use copy/paste constructively.

Guess what goes in the middle... ? Image: Sean Savage.

What do we define plagiarism?

pla·gia·rism
the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
synonyms: copying, infringement of copyright, piracy, theft, stealing.

So, let me be clear, I am not advocating plagiarism, I am advocating a more.. progressive/practical stance towards it. There is a practical compromise somewhere between the extremes of ripping off the work of others, and riffing off the work of others.

riff ‎
A variation on something.

Any variation or improvisation, as on an idea.

verb‎
To improvise in the performance or practice of an art, especially by expanding on or making novel use of traditional themes. (my emphasis)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/riff

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/riffing

(constructive) pla·gia·rism
the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and remix/reword/rewriting them until they become one's own.

The method stems from the assumption that when completing a piece of work, there is a limit to the extent to which you can directly quote the works of others (who of course themselves have actually remixed and re-presented other work that they have encountered in their lifetimes). It is generally advisable to avoid being overly reliant upon direct quotes within the body of your work. When I first began academic writing many years ago, I made the (naive) assumption that I could literally use as many direct quotes as I needed, assuming that those would not be counted in the word count, only my reflections upon those direct quotes, oh how wrong I was! My logic, both then and now, is that rather than attempt to try and pretend I can contribute a completely authentic and original contribution to this body of work, I'd be better off to thoroughly appraise myself of current thinking around the idea and then reflect and write about my responses to the key ideas represented in the literature.

And so it was that I was introduced to the "game" of direct quotation versus paraphrasing. This enotes discussion below highlights the heart of the confusion surrounding this issue:

"In general, you will need to use direct quotes and paraphrases in a master's thesis. I would say that you will generally need to paraphrase more than you quote. What I would do is to paraphrase most of what I was trying to say. Then I would use direct quotes to emphasize the most important points that I was getting from a particular source. You want to be careful about quoting too much, lest it look like you do not understand what is being said and cannot put it in your own words."

"Paraphrasing shows how you synthesize, understand, and intend to use the material. It also shows your adviser and review committee that you can take an idea from someone or some source and reword it so that you are presenting this same idea in another way."

And that, in a nutshell is at the heart of constructive plagiarism, to paraphrase the above quote about paraphrasing, (is this a meta-paraphrase?) you take an idea from someone or some source and reword it so that you are presenting this same idea in another way.

Contrast that then, with this contradictory advice from the same discussion,

"it is probably better to overcite references than over paraphrase them. Under many circumstances, the review process of literature as well as the peer edit/ advisor editing process of writing a master's thesis also addresses the appropriate moments to paraphrase or to cite directly."

Or this, which effectively says do both...

"knowing that quotations are most important, knowing that structural and word requirements impose some limitations, knowing that other evidence that you have collected to prove your idea is also important, the answer to your question is that while paraphrasing is vital to demonstrating your understanding of a broad range of knowledge and to reviewing critical opinion and opposing arguments, you must have high quality and carefully selected quotations to substantiate the things you assert and claim. This may sound like a double-sided answer, but that is precisely what you need, a double-sided approach: You must include that which is most important (analysis and quotes) within the framework of that which is required.

http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/masters-degree-thesis-best-paraphrase-directl-393229

So we find ourselves in a somewhat confusing situation whereby we teach our students that the body of their research cannot be just their own opinion, and has to clearly show that every idea that they wrestle with, actually already has a precedent in some other body of work, and yet at the same time they're not allowed to be overly reliant upon quoting these works, instead they have to play the game where once they have used up the amount of text they can dedicate to direct quotes, they then have to work around it by paraphrasing direct quotes to integrate them into their assignment. Or to put it another way, to make those authors words sound like theirs. That is how we end up in the position I call 'constructive plagiarism'. Namely the skill of taking a wide range of direct quotations from a wide range of sources and authors and then remixing and reworking those into a new seamlessly integrated piece of prose that clearly summarises and represents the ideas that were articulated in the original texts clearly, but has clearly been processed through their own worldview and experiences to represent their own remix of the many sources from which they were influenced.

This is where we get into the complexity of citation, when making direct quotes they should ideally be referenced in a bibliography, when you have paraphrased content that was originally a direct quote, instead this becomes a reference. In my experience very few academics require you to distinguish between these two, in which case we move closer to the ambiguity that is represented by constructive plagiarism...

I think the folks over at scribbr sum up this quandary well with the following:

Quoting

Quoting is when you literally copy a part of a text. It is wise to limit the use of quotes, as they do not improve the readability of your thesis.

Plus, if you use many quotes, you will seem lazy. Next to that, when you use a quote it can give the impression that you did not understand the source or that you did not read the entire text. It is therefore wise to use a quote only when necessary.

For example, you can use one when you want to provide a definition of a certain concept. You can also consider using one when the author has written a sentence so beautifully or powerfully that a paraphrase would diminish the quality of the text.

[...]

Always try to keep a quote as short as possible, preferably no longer than a few sentences. You can also shorten a quote; for example, you might replace a redundant or irrelevant part of a quote with ellipses (…).

However, make sure not to take a quote out of its context by, for instance, citing only one sentence that supports your research in a study that otherwise contradicts your research.

Paraphrasing

When you paraphrase something, you describe a (part of a) study in your own words. Doing so, you can fit an existing theory into your own research very easily.

However, even though the paraphrase is in your own words, the idea is still someone else’s. Therefore, you always have to cite your source when you paraphrase.

It is also important to always introduce the paraphrase. You can do this as follows: “Janssen (2008) states in his research that …”

https://www.scribbr.com/citing-sources/paraphrasing-quoting-summarizing-thesis/


The standout sentence to me in that quotation is "However, even though the paraphrase is in your own words, the idea is still someone else’s. Therefore, you always have to cite your source when you paraphrase." (ibid) This gets to the very heart of this game whereby they as the author are attempting to convey the idea that these ideas of theirs, are not comprised solely of their own ideas, but are an amalgamation of (hopefully many) other authors ideas over time and a range of contexts that have been repurposed to better fit their particular situation. Allow me to quote another colleague here:

“Appealing to authority makes the message digestible with less heartburn if done well. Here I picture a street fight. A direct quote is pushing Einstein out in front of you to intimidate the foes. Paraphrasing is walking out to meet the foes head-on with Einstein, Hawking, and all the other giants that went into forming the idea trailing behind making your knuckle cracking all the more convincing.” Kurt Wittig

Back over to the good folks at scribbr, who have this further helpful advice to give:

Paraphrase or summarise?

The term “paraphrase” is generally used when someone describes someone else’s [words] research in their own words. However, this is not entirely correct. A paraphrase is a description of a certain quote from someone else, put in your own words. A paraphrase is therefore approximately of the same length as the source text’s quote.

When you completely or partially describe the outcome of a more substantial part of the research, it is called a summary.

There is a distinct difference between paraphrasing and summarizing. However, in general (as is also the case in many universities), both are called paraphrasing.

General tips

• Only quote or paraphrase the authors of papers that are authoritative in their field of research. 
• It is important that the quote or paraphrase has added value for your research. The quote or paraphrase should also fit in with the rest of the text. The text preceding or following the quote or paraphrase should clarify what you want to imply.
• A quote or paraphrase is not complete without a proper in-text citation and entry in your reference list, formatted correctly in the appropriate referencing style.

As a case in point, if this was an academic assignment that I was submitting for formal credit, the above quotations from Scribbr would be too excessive to use as a direct quotation, so instead I would have to play the game of choosing one or two sentences and either omitting or paraphrasing the rest, and that’s just one point! Fortunately for me, I don't have to play that game here, and can just let them be, I'm excused from playing the game, and freed to focus on my learning, and wrestling with words that capture my thoughts. And so it is that the process of constructive plagiarism commences. If they have read widely (and they should) they will inevitability find themselves in a situation where they have far more content that they wish to use than they can possibly directly quote, so instead, they begin the process of paraphrasing huge amounts of content that contain essential ideas and themes, as the only other method for doing justice to these ideas they have collected would be to directly quote them, which they cannot do for the reasons outlined above.

Constructive copying then, is the process of remixing and reworking swathes of direct quotes from a wide range of source material while being careful to ensure that they cite the original authors clearly, but relying on paraphrasing and summarising enough to keep direct quotes to a minimum. When students exceed the amount of text they can realistically use as a direct quotation, they switch to paraphrasing/rewriting mode. In this mode they still credit the author but they effectively re-write the direct quotation into a different tense or apply it to a familiar context so that the voice sounds more like theirs then the original author's. Unfortunately, this is more difficult than it sounds, they have to be fairly adept at writing to be able to take the voices and insights of multiple authors and rewrite them so that they sound consistently like they own. In order to be able to do this they need to understand the content thoroughly, they need to be very well read, and they need to have a thorough understanding of the context within which they are writing, which takes me to the point of this entire process, the learning.

What’s the point?

Whenever I hear teachers wringing their hands, expressing consternation over the likelihood of their students constructing written assignments through processes that seem to border on plagiarism, I rarely hear any reference to the actual point of the activity, which is surely to motivate students to research widely, to internalise what they learn, and to represent it simply and clearly in a form that allows the teacher to accurately appraise the extent to which the student has understood the exercise. If the goal really is to motivate students to learn, then we should be less concerned about the minutiae of rules around plagiarism, and be more concerned about motivating students to read widely, research thoroughly, and to present their findings and sources clearly. I believe that a student who does this, is a student who has achieved the goal that the teacher had in mind, namely to learn about the area in question, through a thorough engagement with the material, and by presenting this understanding in a format that is concise and clear.

The Process of Constructive Copying

Cut, copy, paste, swap, then repeat. [peterellisjones]

For the 'how', rather than the 'why' see my other post here.

Practical Paraphrasing

It's rare in my experience to encounter any resources that actually model how to paraphrase properly, but one such resource can be found by the folks over at PlagiarismCheck.org, along with the following handy infographic:

 Did I Plagiarise?

It can be confusing, luckily the visual communication guy has made a handy infographic so you can check:

Constructive Copying

Cut, copy, paste, swap, then repeat. [peterellisjones]

The Process of Constructive Copying

This post focuses on the 'how', for more on the 'why' see my other post, 'Problems with Plagiarism' here.

Phase 1: The Gathering... 

Prepare a (digital) space to use as a container, if your assignment is confined to text only this could just be one long word processing document, or if you feeling a little more traditional, maybe a notebook full of paraphrased notes and direct quotes with just enough reference to lead you back to where you found the information. If it is a 'media rich' assignment combining different media this could be a folder containing text documents, and collections of media such as photographs and video. In much the same way as you have been having to do with text, it is likely that longer videos will need to be trimmed down to the essential elements.

Embark on a research 'safari', this means reading/viewing widely and thoroughly. Thoroughly capture any and all content that you encounter during this initial phase, this could be in the form of condensed notes with blocks of text from books you read transcribed into your own notes (I use dictation software for this, I literally read important sections from the books I read transcribe my notes word for word, carefully including citation in the appropriate format (APA et cetera, with page number references), copy and paste content from original articles (carefully cited) and websites, including provoking discussions encountered on web fora, even transcripts from video material that is of specific relevance to the area of research. When you find an article of particular relevance, a useful strategy is to follow the thread of their research, for example if they cite a particular author to reinforce or verify a point that you think is of particular importance, look up that author's full citation in the bibliography of that article and then track down that article to expand your reading material, of course you can also add to that citation to your list. When reading research articles in PDF form, the notes you compile should include your own contextual notes that you should be inspired to write in the margins if the article is any good. Better still you could add as annotations to the PDF on screen, I like to use GoodReader for this, none of space limits you have to tolerate with paper, and easily searchable later. It is also very important that you attempt to capture any ideas of relevance, this includes ideas that are directly contradicting each other, if anything seek out contradictory opinions/findings that are effectively and intelligently presented. This will come in very useful later when you come to repurpose this material for your own needs.

Patch writing/working

When the initial phase is complete you will have at least one gargantuan word processing document filled with a mind boggling range of excerpts and content that spans a wide range of material that directly relates to your assignment focus, being careful to include the original references either from the article itself or from Google Scholar et cetera. This type of document is often somewhat disparagingly referred to as ‘patchwork writing’, although this connotation is generally because it is assumed (again) that this patchwork state is ready for submission. Generally speaking, it is easy to underestimate the skill needed to avoid patchwork writing, and it is usually easy to spot; if nothing else, because of spelling/grammatical discrepancies, to say nothing of erratic 'voice'—flawless for the plagiarised sections—less than flawless for the sections added to patch the work together. The 'voice' of a patchwork essay can feel extremely dissonant.

“Direct "patchwork" plagiarism occurs when a writer copies material from several writers and rearranges that material with no attempt to acknowledge the original sources.” (my emphasis)

Here’s a good description from one of my favourite sources that you are advised never to cite in an academic article, Urban Dictionary, (along with Wikipedia of course):

patch writing
A technique of writing an essay, blog contribution or research paper by cutting and pasting large chunks of source material and interspersing these with brief connective sentences. The end result is thus a grotesque patchwork of long quotations that reveals little or nothing of the named author's own thoughts or insights [I would argue that if the rewritten text does reveal a great deal about your own thoughts and insights, as opposed, or as juxtaposed to the original author’s, then it’s not really plagiarism any more, is it?].
Source material may be referenced or, when plagiarized, either presented without [or with] citation or in a cosmetically [really? How about articulately? thoroughly? carefully?] reworded format.

Yes, this patchwork is an essential early stage, but, believe me, with constructive plagiarism, it is far from being ‘patchwork plagiarism’. Why? Because we are about to embark on the next phase, as advised by the NIU:

What sets patchwork plagiarism apart from direct plagiarism, however, is that, in patchwork plagiarism, the writer creatively weaves the source materials together with his or her own words into a paragraph that is a mixture of plagiarized and original material. To eliminate this type of plagiarism, you should acknowledge each source that your ideas came from and either enclose the words taken directly from each source in quotation marks or paraphrase the material into your own words.” (my emphasis)

Citations, references, bibliography 

It is very important at this initial phase that you meticulously capture the references to all the material you wish to cite if at all possible, and tag everything with an in-text, or parenthetical citation (eg McHugh, 2017). This can be tricky if you are using text from blogs and online fora (this can be a rich source of intelligent, informed dialogue). Which brings me to another one of my gripes, when oh when will hyperlinking be permitted as a form of referencing in academic writing? I can dream, but for now, you have to show you can play the game of tediously building your list of references and bibliography. For the most part you should be able to get the citations (full reference and in-text) using the usual citation tools. While CiteFast, Bibme, EasyBib and EndNote et al are useful (especially for building your own more obscure references, particularly primary, not officially published sources), my favourite is Google Scholar; search for the original article and you can use the citation tool to copy the reference in the style that you need to use, and it is free! You should use a separate word processed document for this, ideally in table format so that you can paste all of the references into a new row as you work through this assignment, at the end this will become your bibliography, when you sort it into alphabetical order and put a heading at the top.


Done?
Now you are ready for Phase 2.

Phase 2: reEverything

Remix/reword/rewrite

Now you thoroughly read and reread through this document, once you thoroughly understand its contents, you make a copy of this document and begin the process of evolving it from its current form into what will finally become your own final assignment. It will need to go through many iterations and versions between this point and that point, as it evolves and mutates into a document that feels like yours, as opposed to feeling like a disparate patchwork of assorted quotations and extracts. Are there words or terms used that you don’t understand? Reword or find out what they mean, then rephrase so they make more sense to you.This process of interpolation/integration/isolation/clarification is the phase where you move to a very deep level of engagement with the learning in this area, don't be afraid to interrupt this process in order to gather more material as new questions arise and new dilemmas present themselves, as you start to formulate his document into something that feels like your own stream of thought.

Resequence/remove

Now you need to start cutting and pasting and moving text around in the document to create a narrative flow, is there a story emerging from these disconnected text? You gathered them all because they resonated with you in some way, so what is the 'picture' that is forming? Look for a pattern that links these ideas, if you encounter ideas that do not align with this rationale, then those ideas probably need to be deleted, don't panic, the original text is in the original copy of this document if you decide if you need it later. Without a doubt, one of the main challenges you will face using this method is a high word count, (another frustrating element of the game, staying under word length), far in excess of the limits that you will have imposed upon you. Time and time again the challenge of practising concision will be one that will force you to make decisions about what it is you really need to say and what is superfluous.

Isolate/focus/discriminate

Now you need to determine which of these sections is most critical to the understanding of your emerging rationale that you are trying to present. These should ideally be maintained as direct quotations from the original source, but of course this is highly unlikely to be an option, as most academic authorities are very critical of an overweighting of direct quotes. Exactly what they will consider an overweighting will vary greatly, good luck getting a clear answer on that one, but a good ballpark is they should be less than 10%. Sections you wish to keep as a direct quote should be highlighted or formatted in bold so that you can clearly identify and contrast them from your own summaries and paraphrasing within the main body of the text that is starting to emerge.

Rewrite/rephrase/revise/paraphrase/summarise

Now you need to take the rest of the text and rewrite it so that it becomes your own paraphrase of the original text while maintaining the reasoning that prompted you to capture it in the first place. In order to be able to create a seamless bridge between potentially disparate ideas, you will need to write these connections yourself, you may find your own notes you captured in the process of reading to be particularly helpful here, transposing context from that in the original article to that within within which you work and learn also helps. If you made a point of capturing alternative/opposing perspectives during your initial research, this now becomes instrumental in evolving this document into something is more yours than theirs, that feels and sounds more like you, your voice, less like a patchwork, and a lot less like the original writers as you attempt to reconcile these different perspectives, or to align yourself with one against the other. This will require you to interpolate text and sequence it in order to be able to bridge the gaps between the various arguments and rewrite them to form a united and interrupted flow.

Again you will encounter paragraphs that you will struggle to rewrite because they were written so effectively by the original author, ideally you would quote these directly, but of course you cannot because you cannot over use direct quotes, so what do you do now? You paraphrase, so you attribute this sequence to the original writer and cite carefully, but instead of directly quoting, you paraphrase the paragraph instead as was so eloquently described by scribbr above; you will need to set the context for the paraphrased section by formulating the text preceding or following the quote or paraphrase to clarify the points you want to imply.

That's it, this is an iterative process, keep cycling through these stages until you have completed your magnum opus.

1. Remix/reword/remove/resequence
2. interpolate/integrate/isolate/
3. clarification/concision/Focus/Discrimination
4. Rewrite/rephrase/revise/paraphrase/summarise

Then do it all again ⇪ ↻

Many thanks to David Woo and Kurt Wittig for their feedback and their contributions to this post.

A Response to Recent News Articles on the OECD Report "Students, Computers and Learning: Making The Connection"

Many people have seen news articles about a new report from the OECD in recent days. A typical article and headline is this one from the BBC - “Computers 'do not improve' pupil results, says OECD” This headline is followed by the opening line: “Investing heavily in school computers and classroom technology does not improve pupils' performance, says a global study from the OECD.”

Firstly, I would always advise caution when looking at news headlines. The purpose of a headline is by its nature to grab attention, not to necessarily give a balanced viewpoint. Counterpoint the BBC’s headline and opening line with the OECD’s from their own press release for the report:

New approach needed to deliver on technology’s potential in schools

Schools have yet to take advantage of the potential of technology in the classroom to tackle the digital divide and give every student the skills they need in today’s connected world, according to the first OECD PISA assessment of digital skills.

The full report - titled “Students, Computers and Learning: Making The Connection” can be found here.

Digging in to the BBC article and the report itself, shows very clearly that the intent of the OECD report is not to advocate that schools do not use computers with students, it is rather that educators need to get better at using computers to yield improvements.

“School systems need to find more effective ways to integrate technology into teaching and learning  to provide educators with learning environments that support 21st century pedagogies and provide children with the 21st century skills they need to succeed in tomorrow’s world,” said Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills. “Technology is the only way to dramatically expand access to knowledge. To deliver on the promises technology holds, countries need to invest more effectively and ensure that teachers are at the forefront of designing and implementing this change.” Quote from OECD press release

“....Mr Schleicher says the findings of the report should not be used as an "excuse" not to use technology, but as a spur to finding a more effective approach.” Quote from BBC article

This is a sentiment that the College very much subscribes to and one that we believe we are robustly implementing. The College, and more importantly our teachers, are very reflective in their use of technology to support teaching and learning and are constantly looking for uses that show real value add over traditional approaches.

Something that the article does not do is to question the method that the report uses to measure educational success. The measure of educational success used is the OECDs PISA tests. There are reasons why we might question this as a baseline.

The first one is the assumption that the purpose of using computers in schools is to improve academic results in traditional science, english and maths tests. Certainly at UWCSEA, we have never stated that the purpose of using technology to enrich teaching and learning is about improving test results. Rather the stated aims of the original iLearn initiative were to “...seek to improve learning and develop skills through:

• Flexible Progression
• Critical Thinking
• Unhindered Innovation
• Collaborative Learning”

For a complete overview of the original initiative please see here. Please note that these outcomes are now embedded into the UWCSEA Profile.

The PISA tests simply do not measure these skills and qualities, so they are not a valid measure for many of the desired outcomes that technology use can bring to teaching and learning. Nor do they test digital skills, which are in themselves a desirable outcome and for many a requirement for future preparedness in our students.

Further to this, there are many noted academics who question the value of the PISA tests even for their own stated aims. One of the most well known and a frequent guest speaker for the Singapore Ministry of Education, is the American Professor Yong Zhao; Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon.

"PISA, the OECD’s triennial international assessment of 15 year olds in math, reading, and science, has become one of the most destructive forces in education today. It creates illusory models of excellence, romanticizes misery, glorifies educational authoritarianism, and most serious, directs the world’s attention to the past instead of pointing to the future."

For more information you can read Zhao’s blogposts here.

So in summary, the College has found that much of the press coverage of the research has been misleading. We are fully supportive of the recommendations in the original report, although we feel they have limited relevance to our situation. For a full discussion of the report it is also necessary to question the use of the PISA tests as a measure of educational success, particularly as regards the success of “21st century pedagogies.”

Typing Club - our touch typing tutor

Typing Club is an excellent touch-typing tutor. Since the introduction of student laptops, the ability to type accurately and quickly has become an important skill that sits alongside handwriting and other communication skills. The site is free so anyone can open and website and give it a try.

We suggest that our students work through the hundred lessons at their own pace and focus on the feedback that the typing tutor offers. Before each lesson a small animation is shown which highlights finger positioning and effective technique. Throughout the lesson the website records speed, accuracy and key strokes and provides a graphical summary at the end which provides useful feedback. Overtime we hope that our students feel comfortable typing and that is becomes and life-long skill.

As students complete lessons they receive points which reflect their typing accuracy and speed. Each tutor group in in a discreet online space so if they want to compare their progress to other students they can check out the class scoreboard. Other than some broad observations from the points collected, their will not be a direct assessment of the student progress by the individual tutors.

Handwriting or drawing are essential skills for our students. Therefore assessments are frequently in the written format and students are encouraged to take hand-written notes in many subjects.

Note from SMc (another DLC)

If you have not been set up to use the college account (grades 4-7), fret not, you can use the public site (not the college link) here:

http://www.typingclub.com/ (Public link - paid with advertising)

https://uwcsea-dover.typingclub.com/ (Private UWC link, needs student GMail log in)

Another great free option, especially for Primary kids is on the BBC site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/ 

or Ratatype

And these sites are great motivator for kids to increase their WPM through 'gamification': http://play.typeracer.com, and http://www.freetypinggame.net/

Brittany Wyler also wrote to us to share the Router-Network site, dedicated to all sorts of fabulous resources to make you into a terrific touch typist in no time:

https://router-network.com/kids-computer-basics-keyboarding

How long does it take to learn to touch type?

"Practising 'little and often' (15 -30 minutes a day) works much better than an hour or more once a week. If you practise regularly and don't give up, you should be able to learn to touch type fluently in 2-3 months, maybe even less. A total of 10 – 15 hours of practice should get you touch typing slowly:

http://www.typeandtest.com/support-centre/how-long-will-it-take-for-me-to-learn-to-touch-type/

What soon can kids start learning touch typing?

Developmental appropriateness is key here, obviously they need to be able to write sentences, and they need to have hands/fingers long enough to reach from the home keys to the other keys, eg from the 'f' to the r, t, g, c, v—and still be able to tap the spacebar with a thumb... Bear in mind they will almost certainly be learning this on a keyboard designed for adult hands, and no they can't learn how to touch type on a touch screen like an iPad.

The general consensus seems to be from Grade 3/age 8:

" it’s generally believed that they may not have the motor coordination or finger span to truly touch type until about seven or 8 years of age." 

"kids gain the finger span and motor coordination to touch type around 7 and 8 years old."

"They can start this as early as the first grade, but their hand span and the length of their fingers can cover the entire keyboard area comfortably only by the time they are 7 or 8 years old. By this age, they can start building their typing test wpm speed."

When are you going to teach touch typing to all students at school?

It's time to accept that typing is now effectively writing, so for a school to purport to be teaching their students elementary skills like writing, it is fair to ask why would anyone emphasise the teaching of handwriting over the skill of typing? Surely the aim with both is fluidity; essentially we want our students to be able to write 'at the speed of thought' or as close to that as possible, regardless of the medium.

WPM (Words per minute)

The fact is that the speed of (legible) handwriting (with or without cursive) is much slower with touch-typing. Over to Wikipedia for the breakdown of relative speeds:

The average human being hand-writes at 31 words per minute for memorised text and 22 words per minute while copying (Brown CM, 1988).

Whereas an average professional typist types usually in speeds of 50 to 80 wpm, some advanced typists work at speeds above 120 wpm. "Hunt and peck" typists, commonly reach sustained speeds of about 37 wpm for memorised text and 27 wpm when copying text.

Go on, try it yourself, I used typeracer, and scored 35 wpm, first try, them timed myself writing the same text (so a slight advantage) as fast as I could by hand, focusing on speed over beauty, but still maintaining legibility, and scored ... 17 wpm. Pathetic, I know.

So to summarise: that's handwriting at 22 wpm, hunt & peck at 27 wpm (about the same) and between 50-120 wpm for touch-typists. So if we don't teach our students how to touch-type they are in theory at least no worse off than they would have been if we asked them to write it all by hand. But the gains in terms of speed with touch-typing hovering in the range of double to triple the speed are clearly something we'd be crazy to ignore. Even with my own rudimentary experiment I was twice the speed with my tedious 'hunt and peck' technique than I was with handwriting... And of course digital text is capable of so much more than handwritten—it's situated, accessible, mutable...

Ok, I'm convinced, so how? When?

Touch typing is really the kind of thing best done at home, due to the need for it to be extended, diligent, and regular. We just don't have the time in school to dedicate to this, and to be honest, it's not a great use of a teacher's time, as they wouldn't be actually teaching, they'd just be invigilating silent drilling. This really is one of those things best done at home with a dedicated parent, I often suggest this a good holiday target, with a reward for the kids who learn it.

Really the only way I can see touch typing becoming a school focus is if it replaced the teaching of handwriting/cursive, which is exactly what they're doing in Finland. Something tells me that would not go down well with most parents though!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/finland/11391999/Finland-to-teach-typing-rather-than-handwriting-in-schools.html


Brown CM (1988). Human-computer interface design guidelines. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.

Is Cloud Confusion Driving you Crazy?

Ridiculous name, revolutionary technology.

With the exponential increase in 'cloud' capacity, it is becoming increasingly critical to rely on this powerful technology to ensure that all of our essential data is safe, and accessible, from, well, any screen with an internet connection. With the multiplicity of devices in our lives, this functionality is pretty much essential.

This is more of a blessing than a curse, BUT.

There's always a but.

Now I know Benjen Stark said "You know, my brother once told me that nothing someone says before the word "but" really counts… (GoT)

But...

The fact is that despite it's magnificence, the 'cloud' can cause a huge amount of confusion, so let's just break this down a bit.

What's the cloud?

Essentially, the 'cloud' is a rather dubious name for describing any of your data which is not just stored on your actual device, instead it's stored on a remote server (very much on the ground) that pulls and pushes your content to your devices over the internet. 

How many clouds?

Well, as it turns out there are quite a few forms of cloud technology, but the ones of most interest to us at UWCSEA, are Apple's 'iCloud' and, well pretty much everything even vaguely Google related from 'Drive' to Google Photos et cetera.

Cloud confusion...

The confusion stems from the fact that we all need to separate our home and work life, not to mention that the school's user agreement clearly lays out expectations that there should be clear boundaries between personal and professional use of UWCSEA devices. Anyway, no one really wants to see those pictures of me in a bikini on a beach in Magaluf, allegedly. So whether you realise this or not, you have cloud accounts associated with every Google account, and they are completely separate, as it should be, the same is true for any Apple ID you use (more below on that).

In our hyperconnected world, digital objects have inherited the property of stickiness. Photos end up everywhere and it takes not only the knowledge of how all of the synchronisation works to understand where, but also a determined approach to 'e-Cleaning' to make sure that they are not in places you didn’t expect.

If you're confused, don't feel bad, this stuff is CONFUSING for everyone, why? Two reasons: 

The first is that people don’t know, or understand, what happens to their digital property when they tick the “backup everything to iCloud/Google” check boxes. 

The second is that Apple, and Google (and other cloud providers, eg DropBox, SkyDrive et al), in their eagerness to make the process as simple as possible, do a really bad job of explaining what is going on, and importantly, what can happen if things go wrong. It just 'works' apart from when it 'just works' in a way that you don't want it to work... 

Go wrong? What do you mean 'go wrong'!?

Well if you mix up your accounts with your devices you can end up accidentally having the 'cloud' hoover up all of your photos and videos that you're taking on your phone/tablet/laptop/desktop and adding them to your online collection, if you share that collection with other people (they are private by default) then that audience can see everything, you might be surprised at the kind of content your device has helpfully uploaded in the background for you... 

Don't Panic!

This problem really only relates to your 'rich' media, specifically photos and videos; you can happily access work/home email without any conflict, although I'd still use separate apps to minimise confusion, see below.

Solutions?

You can only have ONE cloud account associated with a mobile device*, you can sign in and out, but this just gets more confusing, so as a general rule, pick one and stick with that. So are the photos/videos on your phone more work or home related? If so, use the home cloud account, but don't use that device for taking videos/photos for work use, unless it is temporary, ie email/transfer them to a device dedicated to work use, and delete them afterwards.  Is your Pad more work related? Well sign into a work cloud account—which is most likely the UWC Gapps account, but then don't capture media for home use on that device, unless it is temporary, ie email/transfer them to a device dedicated to home use, and delete them afterwards.

Isolate with Apps

By dedicating specific apps to work/home you can mitigate the confusion, eg (assuming an iOS device here) Use the Mail app for your home account, use the Gmail App for work, use the Safari app for home browsing, use the Chrome app for school browsing...  This separation breaks down with rich media though, as the apps generally link to your device camera roll, which is shared across the entire device, regardless of the account an app is associated with.

Kids/Hubbie's/Wife's content mixed up with yours? 

Welcome to Apple ID vs App Store

Many of you want to use the same Apple ID on multiple family devices, so that if you purchase something from the App store you can install it on any device in the family without paying twice, that's fine, but don't confuse this with sharing the same iCloud account. 

WHAT? They're different?

Well, yes... and.. no.

You can use the same Apple ID for iCloud AND for purchasing things from Apple, especially the App Store. But these don't have to be the same, and if you want family members to be able to download stuff you've purchased you will need to separate their Apple ID (iCloud) from your Apple ID (App Store).

See? I told you it was/is confusing.

So in my case, scenario, all of the devices in my house can use MY Apple ID in the App Store to download things I've purchased for myself, or for them. BUT 

(and it's another big but)

Everyone in your family should use their OWN Apple ID on their own device, these can (and should be) be separate, that way everyone in your family keeps their 'stuff' separate from yours, but you can all download content from the same App Store account.

You can use a shared account for App Store, & an individual account/s for iCloud

Family Sharing

After years of using the above method to stay sane, Apple finally conceded that there is an issue and rolled out Family Sharing' last year, this should hopefully simplify things, unless you like me use more than one App Store account (I have one in Singapore and one in the UK), as Family Sharing is restricted on onto App Store, ie if you set it up using the Singapore store, all accounts have to be in the Singapore store, even if you leave and move overseas... Which means you need to have an active credit card account for that store. ...

Which is why I don't use it. However it could be JUST what you need, in which case click here, to follow Apple's guidelines to setting this up for your family. Also note, if you use Apple's Family Sharing method to set up Apple IDs for your kids (under 13), they will have to use an iCloud email account, not their school account, this is fine, but you may need to explain this to them...

Smarter iCloud Settings

If you're one of these teachers who is fortunate enough to have had an iPad provided for you by the college, for lots of reasons, including:

• trickledown learning—becoming familiar with device by just using it—you use it for personal reasons, like making a home video, but this skills you up, so you can use the new found skills with those apps with your students with greater confidence
• enabling you to easily explore and learn how to use apps you want to use with your students, and new apps
• to allow you to more easily capture evidence of learning (or the opposite) for your own planning and prepping purposes
• to more easily facilitate recording and assessment, without the many limitations posed by paper based systems, using apps like Numbers, Notability, iDoceo et al.

The problem is this means you will have a load of content (if not all of it) in your camera roll which is student/college related, if you use the same device on holiday, well, all of your snaps will get mixed up with your school content - not ideal. if you connect this device to your iCloud account all of your personal media on other connected devices will also all stream into the same camera roll all 'polluting' the stream. 

You could easily solve this by just not connecting your iPad to your iCloud account, the problem with this is being connected to the iCloud is really useful, being able to sync all your Apple content from other apps like Notes, Pages, Safari bookmarks et cetera can be really useful, not to mention all the content on iTunes you might have purchased. So how can you have your school iPad connected to your iCloud account and avoid this? Easy, just go into your iCloud settings and switch off Photos, done. Everything in your camera roll is now only content you captured with this device, you can still transfer it to other devices using email, Airdrop, apps like Send it Anywhere. If you install the Google Photos app, it will sync all your camera roll content to your college GApps account, so it's all easily accessible from your laptop—winwin! In fact using the suite of Google Apps (Google Drive, GMail...) is another easy way to keep your work/home life separate on the same device. 

Settings - iCloud

You can turn any/all of these off

Final Advice...

I hate to break it to you, but we have really reached a point where trying to manage the entire scope of your digital life on one laptop is increasingly untenable. My advice? Get a dedicated device for home, and keep that content completely separate for the device you use for work. Simple. If you are a family with loads of video/photos, and media being captured and shared by everyone (our home as 2 adults, 2 kids, one helper, and 5 laptops, 5 iPhones, 5 tablets, and one desktop) then I'd advise you to purchase a dedicated desktop computer (I like the iMac, surprise, surprise) with the BIGGEST hard drive available. That is where all family media is stored, all other devices are dedicated to that individual's content only; so any 'family' content is temporarily on their device, and is transferred to the BIG MAC ASAP.  That's it.

*On a laptop/desktop, you can have more than one cloud account, but they would need to be associated with different user accounts on that machine, you probably need to see IT Support, or a DLC to help with this... 

Emergency Medical Details & your iPhone

Have you got emergency contact details? Have you got a medical history? Have you got an iPhone?

Well then it makes sense to combine them. 

That way if someone finds your iPhone lying around we have some chance of getting it back to you (the emergency details are available from the lock screen) and if we stumble on your listless frame, we have some hope of working out who you are if you have your phone on you, which you probably will...

This is also a good idea for you to encourage your students to do likewise, well those with iPhones anyway.

For more on the how, see the advice from the experts I've linked to below:

Health App—Medical ID

Within the health app, you can personalize the Medical ID to keep your important health information in case of emergency, from a lost phone emergency to a lost consciousness emergency.

Apple Insider guide.

Apple's more detailed breakdown on the whole app, not just the emergency contact element.

Math Bytes

Units of Measure in the 21st Century

It's always been a source of great consternation to me, that mathematics benchmarks around the world still appear to be completely oblivious of the implications of the impact of digital technologies in the world of mathematics.

To see explicit evidence of this, you need look no further than the Mathematics benchmarks that are currently used for the teaching of measure, which are still confined purely to units which, while still useful, are no longer the most common units of measure that are are significant in the lives of people who rely upon digital technologies in their daily lives. That means most of us, especially if you're reading this.

Why is it that in schools that are blessed with the ubiquitous provision of digital technologies, one-to-one laptops and iPads, the students never learn anything about how file sizes and the measurements of file sizes work?

There are two main reasons for this as far as I understand it:

• Almost universal ignorance on the part of teachers, more of whom are still largley completely oblivious of the difference between a megabyte and gigabyte. 
• An assumption that a generation of digital natives just automatically get this stuff, trust me, they don't. 
• A somewhat naive assumption that if there is a subject area that will remain unaffected by the influence of digital technologies it has to be mathematics. 

Teach Maths for your present, and their future not your past... 

Ask yourself, how can it make any sense in this day and age for students to be able to complete their mathematics education, competent in the calculations relating to kilograms and kilometres and millimetres and litres, but not have the slightest clue about the units of measure that are fundamental to the devices that they rely on every day?

The problem is caused by this... lack of awareness are profound. I don't know of any students who find themselves in difficulty is because they were confused about the difference between a metre and a kilometre, but I regularly encounter students and teachers who are flummoxed by their their inability to understand how big a megabyte is and why they can't email that 200MB video that was ‘rejected by the server'.

Fortunately, the solution is obvious; educate the teachers and they will educate the students, but unfortunately it looks like these things will not change until the ‘official, mandatory' benchmarks change. If anything this post is a desperate plea for just a bit of common sense; do you really need a mandatory benchmark for you to realise that in this day and age it is absolutely essential that our teachers, and their students, are as familiar with kilobytes and megabytes, as they are with metres and kilometres?

One extremely rare example of digital measures in Maths - Khan Academy

Trust me, it's not that difficult, if anything it’s actually easier to understand than traditional units of measure. When teaching measurements of length students have two differentiate between tens and hundreds and thousands, but when dealing with units of measure for file size, it's much simpler, everything is 1000 times bigger than anything before. That's it.

Put your practice where your pedagogy is...

So, inspired by Khan Academy, I put my my practice where my pedagogy is, I ran a lesson with a grade 5 class, with the single goal of demonstrating how easy it is to enable students to get to grips with this fundamental unit of measure. Essential to this was simplicity, and I know of no technoogy that is simpler to use, and as transformative in application as an effectively used 'wiki' space. In this case, as a GApps school, we used a Google Site, but any kind of online fora will suffice, more on the power of online 'interthinking' via wiki spaces here.

As with all of these kinds of lessons, most of the work goes into formulating a decent provocation, one that is not too narrow, otherwise all you get is 22 responses that are pretty much identical, as every student just imitates or duplicates the previous response. The prompt below shows how this can be avoided. In terms of 'doability' this task took me about 15 minutes to set up, and while I was able to complete the activity within one lesson, and one homework, to be honest it could have run for a week if I'd let it.


Prompt:

It was immediately apparent how natural this online environment is, and as can be seen in the clip below, far from being a screen dominated task, it stimulated a great deal of (on task) discussion and collaboration.  Remember these kids wrestle (without any help from teachers or textbooks) with file size every day, so asking them to envisage scenarios that use these quandaries as problem solving situation is not a big deal.

Just one example of interthinking in this lesson...

Interthinking - online and offline

It's important to note that, while the activity is screen centred, the learning is not confined to the screen, the students were just an animated (I reckon more so) than they would have been if this has been presented to them as a worksheet (which it could). But the transformative difference here is that moving it to a web based interactivity (not just an activity—see what I did there ;)?) facilitates the leverage of the transformative elements of SAMMS:

Access: They can easily search for clarification on specific elements they find confusing, such as units they want to consider that are not in the prompt (petabytes anyone?) particular vocabulary, or clarification about the amount of storage associated with particular contexts they wish to consider, eg the capacity of their smartphone, their games console, memory card, tablet etc.

Mutability: In response to feedback (from peers and their teacher), students can easily duplicate and revise their posts and post a second post (by effectively 'replying' to themselves) that shows clear evidence that relevant criticisms have been resolved.

Multimodality: Of course this entire medium is multimodal, if we had had another lesson, this activity could have been expanded to allow students to incorporate image, audio and video.

Socially Networked & Situated: As it is online, we can facilitate a P2P homelearn (as opposed to homework) activity. Assign assessment buddies to feedback on each others posts at home, of course the teacher can now easily monitor the quality of these online interactions, and interject, support, clarify, redirect as necessary.

I've included some examples below that illustrate how powerful this task was, and how easy it is to set up. 

Note that a great deal of the conversation (on screen and next to it) centred on wider mathematical concepts that would be relevant to the teaching of traditional units of measure, eg appropriate use of units, conversion of units, and that old favourite, explain your thinking... Now that's what I call a #winwin

Below you can find a PDF of the original discussion in it's entirety, bear in mind that this is not the actual discussion, which continues to develop following this capture.