Decision Making with the Computer

Before class on Monday, I ever thought that sites like google and Facebook could be decision making software. I don't usually use Facebook to make decision or ask questions, but I definitely use google to search reviews for popular products or places I might want to try. It has helped me make good choices with my spending so I don't waste money on products that aren't the greatest. Also using google search or yahoo to find the cheapest place to buy things. It is interesting how websites and software we use everyday can be decision making tools.

"When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research"- Wilson Mizner

When I was searching for articles about plagiarism, I was amazed at how many famous people have been accused of plagiarism. People like Sarah Plain, Elizabeth Hasselbeck from "The View", and even Obama have been accused of stealing another person's work. Just searching the words "plagiarism" into CBS search bar came up with 21 pages of articles about people who are thought to have plagiarized. A lot of people think that plagiarizing is just using copying and pasting information into a research paper, but it has expanded with the help of technology. To plagiarize before computers, a student had to go to the library and handwrite all the information they wanted to use in their papers. It was as much work to plagiarize as it was to just come up with their own creation. Now, it is super simple to select a chunk of text, copy it and paste it right onto the word document.

Since plagiarism is on the rise, many colleges are doing everything they can to stop this epidemic. One of the ways I have personal used is SafeAssign. In English class, every paper that we had to turn in was submitted online and also we had to have a had copy in class.

Ethics in My Life

Everyday we make choices based on our own ethics and morals. An example of when my ethics were compromised was in high school, working on a group project. One of the group members didn't make any input on the project at all. When they did say something, it was usually a stupid joke or rude comment about someone. Most of the time, we tried to ignore him, but it was very hard. When we presented the project, he didn't participate at all. No one in our group knew what to do, but fortunately our teacher handed out worksheets to grade our group and other groups. We finally got to tell the teacher what was happening.

The Fall of American Education

"I think the world is run by C students."- Al McGuire


America is one of the richest countries, but doesn't have the best education system. Many people have an opinion as to why this is. These explainations range from lazy students, unprepared teachers, or the learning atmosphere. All of these might have small parts to do with this problem, but not all students are lazy, not all teachers are unprepared, and not all classrooms are inferior. Cookie cutter curriculums  and 
A very informative article called "The Decline of American Education" by Jiang Xueqin explains the problems and why nothing is helping the situation. She says that the reason for students being unwilling to learn is because of the hypocrisy in the school system. Some of the hypocrisy she describes is, "how school budgets are always the first to be cut in a financial crunch, how they have to cram for meaningless tests so their teachers can get a Christmas bonus and politicians can win elections, how adults discuss education reform without asking for their input." When the students feel as if they don't have a voice in their education, they look at it as pointless and futile. This problem causes a domino effect that causes the teachers to crumble which in return causes the whole foundation of education to crumble. A way to fix this problem would be putting the focus back on the students instead of worrying about the superficial appearance. What is really important is that every student has a connection with the teachers and actually want to learn with people they trust. It will be a very hard and slow process to change parents, teachers, and students' attitudes about learning as Xueqin explains, "Voters never want to pick up the tab, don’t want to be lectured on how to raise their children, and certainly don’t want to accept responsibility for their children’s failure." Once everyone moves on from the past and starts a clean slate for the future, society can be fixed and lead to the education system being fixed.


The Decline of American Education article