Romance and Replication

At last week's Teaching Colloquy on "Academic Honesty in an Information Age," Jonathan Alexander pointed to how a romance writer had borrowed passages describing Native American life from an ethnography composed in the nineteen-twenties, which she had repurposed into pieces of her fictional work. In "Nora Roberts: 'It seems clear' author plagiarized," CNN describes how the blog Smart Bitches Trashy Books had posted a number of side-by-side comparisons to make the case. For some mysterious reason, the article also quotes John Barrie, the founder of the plagiarism-detection software company Turnitin.com, a character who has appeared in this blog as a media hound before.

Among those who teach composition, there has been a considerable amount of consternation about the fact that the Turnitin company has actually offered in an e-mail to pay those who give what would be assumed to be laudatory papers about their software for travel to the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication. In response, wag Nick Carbone posted the following offer for those going to the upcoming Computers and Writing Conference.

In the spirit of turnitin.com's enticement:

If you will say anything nice in any presentation, cocktail party, hallway conversation about any Bedford/St. Martin's new media product, or about me personally, then Bedford/St. Martin's will gladly --and for free-- teleport you from the airport not only to Athens, but directly into your hotel room, where ever in Athens it may be.

When you port into your room, you'll find that your luggage will have been ported just ahead of you and not only that, unported from your suitcase and into the closet and dresser in your room.

No driving, no waiting. Look for the B/SM phone booth just by the baggage area. Ask for Scotty.

Note: This is beta version of our new F2FIMFOLL (Face to Face Insta Meeting For Online Learning), a product designed to let online only instructors meet their distance students in their offices, homes, carports, or wherever they may be. When we sell it, it will include a free handbook and all travel vis F2FIMFOLL can be used as miles with your favorite bus company.

Lynda Haas's presentation about "Using Turnitin as a Postitive Pedagogical Tool" contained a number of creative ideas for pedagogy. Because it is proprietary software, I probably sounded considerably more jaded about the product at the colloquy, in a much more developed version of this paper on "Honor Coding." Slides are here.