Computers and the Internet
For most of my high school career, I have used the Internet for my research. My method relied on printing out the material, highlighting the important sections and trying to interpret these sections into my own words to incorporate this research into my papers. I feel that the Internet has made it harder for students to use research in their work.
Copy and paste are two of the best tools in the computer. When you do take information, there is no typing at all. With two clicks of a mouse, you could have a complete term paper after only a few minutes of searching. The temptation is there and with the increased academic pressures at college, many students succumb. The web is always available. In the middle of January, you don’t have to bundle up to go to the library all you have to do is type in a few “search” words and instantly you have all the information at your fingertips. Resources, when readily available, often get abused. This is the case with the Internet.
Most college students feel that they are invincible. Who would be able to catch them cheating? No one. They go ahead and do it. Any person who cheats and gets away with it may feel a “high” of some sort. This might tempt them to try it again. The student then does it and gets caught. The ramifications could throw their life into shambles. What about a job or getting into another college? If a stricter cheating, copying and plagiarizing policy were in effect from middle school on, I believe that the problem may be cut in half. College may be the first place where a student is under a lot of stress to produce for him/herself and their families. If that student were confident in the writing and researching abilities, then they would have less of a chance to “crack” and plagiarize. Tough and earlier enforcement of plagiarizing consequences would help to cut back on the student’s temptation to plagiarize.
Many people don't know about copyright laws. Therefore no one understands the term “copyrighted” According to Open Spaces magazine, “the core purpose of copyright laws as expressly stated in the constitution is: to promote the process of knowledge and learning.
The article Cybercheats clearly shows the cause/use of plagiarism. Students of all ethnic backgrounds use plagiarism. However it also shows how most schools are trying to crack down. Two employees from National Institutes of Health actually have a program that can decode essays that may have some sort of plagiarism. It is clearly obvious that the students who do indeed use this from of cheating have no real values. As Michael Miller, a teacher at Georgetown University, says, "It's really up to the individual reader to do with the information what they will, good or evil. I belong to a school that says teach people to do the right thing and then turn'em loose." It seems that if you are adult enough to actually attend collage then you are adult enough to handle the pressures and responsibilities that come along with it. For most cases the use of plagiarism is clearly used by students who don't know the value/capabilities of there own. They also aren't usually aware of the consequences.
I know many students who use sites such as 123HelpMe.com to "gather research" - steal other people's ideas and papers. Yet it still amazes me that people could be so naïve and lazy. Think about it: in high school, you are already expected to know whatever material you've been taught (hopefully). If you cannot get through high school without cheating, how well will you do in college? Professors check whether you have cheated, and you are required to write lengthy papers based on detailed research, which is not present on many Internet paper mills and notes sites. If you cannot read, write, and think on your own, you are doomed. Maybe not now, maybe not during your high school career, but eventually, you will flunk a class or get expelled for cheating. If your job requires you to write essays or gather information, and you "cheat" (gather information without citing it and getting permission) you will be sued and fired.
The internet is both a blessing and a curse. Your students may need some guidance on identifying proper sources and unreliable sources. Many campuses have writing centers that can help with this. I encourage you to try something new with technology next term. At the same time, I also understand that technology has its pros and cons, and that adopting technology in the classroom is something that professors and teachers are comfortable with on different levels and to different extents. It can be frustrating and it can be time-consuming. But it can also open doors to new experiences, new ways of learning and collaborating, and new discoveries in the
Steven Pinker states that “search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge …” (1). Many students are not reading their assigned books anymore. Sparknotes and other web sites such as Shmoop have provided students with resources which are not useful. Students’ skim through these sites to read books. Most of the websites gives students’ plot summaries which are from another person’s take on that book .This damages the student 's’ chances of actually reading and understanding a book and having their own opinion .The more we run to search engines for answers the less we shall learn . Technology has taken the place of many students’ brains which causes them to think they are dumb. This leads to the need of searching for answers online at all
Cheating and plagiarism should be more frowned upon and there needs to be harsher punishments. I think that if society didn’t have such high standards and didn’t expect so much more from the youth, cheating would be dimmed down and not as common. We’d actually be able to focus on learning; therefore, we’d be better educated in the
In recent years, the Internet has become the number one choice for doing research. A person can find information on just about anything. There are websites devoted to cooking recipes, musicians, schools, and pornography. Many schools will even allow students to apply for admission over the Internet. Schools such as California State University, Northridge give students an option to register for classes through the school website, making it quick and easy to get classes. The Internet is truly the "information superhighway."
Copyright came about in the fifteenth century in Britain, sometime after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. “The printing press represented a supreme threat to the clergy’s monopoly on idea dissemination; moveable type was the fifteenth century version of Napster” (Copyright Website). Copyright laws were instated to protect authors of various intellectual properties, (literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, architectural) and give credit to the proper author. Over the years copyright laws have changed dramatically, because of the development of the internet. Before the internet in order to be caught plagiarizing someone would have to read through all sorts of literary works, to know exactly where the information came from. These days a person can just type what they are looking for into search engine sites like “Google” and fine exactly what they were looking for. With information accessed with such ease it makes it almost effortless to plagiarize (the act of stealing others ideas, and passing them off as your own), other peoples work without the author having any idea. "The Internet has been characterized as the largest threat to copyright since its inception. The Internet is awash in information, a lot of it with varying degrees of copyright protection. Copyrighted works on the Net include news stories, software, novels, screenplays, graphics, pictures, Usenet messages and even email. In fact, the frightening reality is that almost everything on the Net is protected by copyright law. That can pose problems for the hapless surfer” (Copyright Website). The electronic environment does not change the ways we consider ownership, it does however change the ways in which we use and distribute intellectual propert...
For example, when there were no calculators in subjects such as trigonometry and calculus, students had to do it the “old-fashioned” way. They had to write the problem out completely and come to the final product on their own. This method enhanced a student’s mind more than the technological era currently. It allowed students to develop a deeper understanding of the problems, and how to get to the solution. Author Nicholas Carr voices his opinion in his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in which he questions the effect of the internet on the ability to process information. Carr states, “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore” (Carr 394). The essay showcases the negatives that adhere with the use of technology in both the educational and day-to-day world. It implies that gradually, the overuse of technology will leave an everlasting effect on the mind. Students will become too accustomed with searching the web to find answers, and the effect is that it will leave their minds blank and
It’s a wonder where society would be without the discovery of the internet? Unless you have never watched TV, listened to a radio, or read a book, you almost certainly have heard about the internet. Today very few, if any, haven’t used the internet in some aspect of their life. It is almost impossible to have not used it. Internet is installed in anything from phones to cars. If one says he or she hadn’t used it, one would be isolated from society. The mass of information that the internet brings to the table is astonishing. People no longer have to find books to educate themselves. With the amount of information and the easy accessibility to the internet, books are becoming a thing of the past. There are many benefits from the internet, the speed and accessibility are the key ones. With benefits there are always downfalls, and the internet has its fair share. The problem with the internet replacing book research is the credibility of the research, and the limitations to learning. Even though conducting internet research is more efficient, research on the internet often lacks credibility and limits readers learning.
The Internet has become the primary source of information gathering. Students no longer deem it necessary to retain facts, nor absorb and understand their assignments, because they use online search engines, like Google, to educate themselves. I would wager that most young people do not know how to man...
Everyone needs to know that the World Wide Web (a subset of the Internet; see Internet for a definition of "Internet") is a tool, not the be-all and end-all of research. Many students begin their research assignments with the "fact" from their teachers that they'll be able to find, from now on, everything they need on the Web. Not true.
Term Paper: The History of the Internet The Internet began like most things in our society, that is to say that the government started it. The Internet started out as an experimental military network in the 1960s. Doug Engelbart prototypes an "Online System" (NLS) which does hypertext browsing, editing, email, and so on. The Internet is a worldwide broadcasting resource used for distributing information and a source for interaction between people on their computers. In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds.
The internet has a negative effect on research also. With all that information available it can be difficult to find a topic, or sort through all the information available. With that comes the validity if the information found, the user should use reputable websites such as BBC or Government sites and avoid using Wikipedia. Another disadvantage is that the internet can cause the user to get distracted and waste time on social websites such as facebook or seek information for personal use wasting, company time. There is always the possibility that an employee will view and download inappropriate material. Of course as with doing anything on the internet there is a security risk from viruses, spyware and hackers.
Internet needs to be in the classrooms of schools in the new millennium. If you can’t get on and surf the internet by yourself then you are looked down upon. The internet is the new big thing, it’s technology at it’s best. That’s why we must keep our students in schools educated and updated with it, the internet has endless possibilities. Students would never run out of information for their reports in school, they can either go to the library and look for the information they need and hope that the book they need is not checked out, which could take up to a couple of hours. While on the internet you can find the information in the matter of minutes. Many books are outdated and you would be lucky to check one out if everybody in the class is doing the same report! The internet keeps up with current information coming in every day of the week. I don’t think students abusing their time on the internet is a problem, I think we need teachers or someone to monitor where they are going on the internet. There are programs advisors can download that can block out any material not suitable for students at schools.
Because of its speed and convenience, the Internet has quickly become one of the most-used resources for gathering information. The Internet allows people to have access to a lot of information in one place, and in the convenience of their own homes. However, many problems arise when students use the Internet as a research source for school assignments. Many students are typically under the false assumption that everything on the Internet is valid; if it’s written it must be true. Problems that emerge from using the Internet as a research tool are the quantity of information, the quality of the information, issues of plagiarism, and additional problems with general Internet usage. The issues discussed in this paper are mostly referring to the information found on the Internet when students used it to do research. Most of these problems mentioned often do not apply to publications that are found in both the print form and in an online form.