"Frank" frankdotlogullo@comcastperiodnet wrote in message
...
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
Almost.

An acquaintance of mine taught a senior level research methods course,
and informed the class that if anyone plagiarized anything from the web,
they'd flunk the course, no matter how high their grade was on previous
work. School policy. Two students thought she was kidding, and in their
final paper for the course, they cut & pasted stuff right off the web.
They flunked, they complained, they needed the course to graduate. Oh
well.
You might like this letter in todays Chemical and Engineering News:

I'm responding to "Wired for Learning" with 36 years of teaching
experience behind me, yet with something less than enthusiasm for the
technology-savvy teachers who were profiled in the article. It has been my
experience that today's teens know very little about modern technology
except how to use it. They know almost zero about the science behind the
technology. Most know nothing about electricity, don't know how AC differs
from DC, and don't know what electromagnetic waves are or why their
frequency matters. In fact, all they know about most of this technology is
which buttons to push and in what order.

Making teens push more buttons than they already do does not make them
wiser or more talented; it only gives them a warm feeling that they
understand many things that they, in fact, do not understand.

One sentence struck me as particularly untrue in this piece: "For example,
before computers became ubiquitous, when students were at home and got
stuck on a homework problem, other than a phone call to a fellow student,
they didn't have access to immediate help."

Are they all orphans? Don't they have parents? Isn't asking your parents a
valuable learning path for today's youth? I asked my mother for help. My
children asked me. My grandchildren ask their parents, and I presume my
great-grandchildren will do the same. Surely, homework problems are about
something that parents learned also. I hope the homework problems are not
about which button to push. If so, the teacher's syllabus needs examining.

Enough said. Your readers will know what I am trying to express. I hope
so, or my mother would be very displeased.

Roy W. Clark
Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Quite a few people (including adults) apparently need a private detective to
help find the public library.