Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in the Digital Age - NYTimes.com

Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in the Digital Age - NYTimes.com

Visual Text

A piece of visual text, or propaganda (which is pejorative), is a picture, graph, chart, etc. that is used to "say" something without words. Look at THIS website. Look at the images and think about what it is that they're "selling" by choosing those particular images. What are they trying to say?

So, in your particular issue, you find a web site, or a film, a logo, or a magazine advertisement (there are many other types of visual texts, of course), and think about how it has been created to communicate something about the cause.

Another example. What is the image below trying to say? Is it making an argument? How is it doing that? What is it using to do that -- what suppositions does it make about you the viewer?

For Those of You Writing About Climate Change:

Climate scientists are getting a little too angry for their own good. - By Matthew C. Nisbet - Slate Magazine

GRAMMAR TAKE-HOME EXAM

Please go to e-Courseware and click on CONTENT under our class. Print and complete the grammar take-home exam. We will meet at 12:30 to exchange the exam for your Part II papers.

Assignment for 3/18

We will discuss Primo Levi's Periodic Table on Thursday and discuss your own element essays. Please write an essay, minimum 350 words, in which you reflect on an element in terms of your own life and experiences. You may extend something that Levi began, as in, you may discuss the thing/idea/event that you were put in mind of through what he wrote, or you may do something entirely new. This is to be a creative exercise -- have fun with it.

English 1020
The Researched Argument, Part Three

Goal
The goal of the semester paper is to have you research and write a persuasive essay about an issue that matters to you. That issue should arise from a community to which you belong, and, ideally, your essay should allow you to contribute to the dialogue about that issue in your community. In order to facilitate your increased competence in writing persuasively, the semester paper will be broken down into four interrelated parts, each part devoted to answering an essential question about your issue. When completed, your semester paper will be approximately 12-15 pages and include a bibliography.

Process for Part 3
Your task for this third part is to write a 3-4 page paper in which you get into the substance of your argument by evaluating what's at the heart of your controversy. It is in this part of your draft that you put forth your opinion regarding the issue in an attempt to persuade your reader about its nature. Listed below are some questions for you to consider. Answering those questions will help you clarify what it is you're actually arguing about.

• What makes it a good or bad thing?
• Should it be sought or avoided?
• Is it right or wrong?
• Is it better or worse than something else?
• Is it more or less desirable than any alternative?
• Is it more or less right or wrong than something else?


As you structure your argument, it will likely be helpful at this point to review types of evidence and.

In this paper, you should not explain how the problem can be solved; you should not argue for a particular course of action. That will come in Part 4.

You'll have to continue your research for this paper, and you should include specific references within your paper that you have found thus far that you think are important to understanding and defining your issue.

Evaluation
This is considered part of a longer paper, so this writing task is a draft (which counts for credit). My expectation is that this draft has been thoughtfully researched and composed (and proofread). Your paper will be deemed Exemplary, Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory based on how well and how fully you address the aspects of the paper noted above. Because you will revise this paper and incorporate it into the final semester paper, my comments will not be corrections but revision directions and suggestions. You may revise and resubmit this draft for additional feedback.

Assignment

1. You will write an annotated bibliography on each of the sources that you have encountered for this paper to date. The bibliography must include:

• The MLA citation.
• A very brief bio/background of the author, or the website from which it is taken.
  
• The direct quote which you will be using (in quotes or paraphrase, or even just for the establishment of definitions).
• Your response, and rephrasing, of that quote (even if you are going to quote it directly), with an explanation of what it contributes to your paper.

2. You will write an outline for your paper thus far (Part I and Part II) using either bullet points or Roman numerals (your choice).

3. You will bring all of the above, plus a printed (and stapled) Part II to class on Tuesday, the 16th.

4. We will discuss your reflections on Periodic Table. Bring those in as well.

Aimee Mullins on Disability and Words

Make Something Assignment - Modeling Paragraphs

1. Make something - anything. It must be something that you can hold in your hands, show to the class. (Some examples: cookies, a craft project, etc.)
2. Write out a list of ingredients. You must have at least three ingredients (or components, parts, etc.). Do not put your name on your paper.
3. On a separate sheet, type - in paragraph form, using all of the elements of a paragraph - the process of creation, the recipe, if you will. Make sure that you leave nothing out, and that there is nothing extraneous in the paragraph. Do not put your name on this page either.

Bring all three things to class.

Science-Related Outside Events

Cognitive Science Seminar Schedule, Spring

The talks are at 4PM on Wednesdays in 430 FIT.

February 24: Speaker, Rob Isenhower; Hosted by Rick Dale

Rob Isenhower earned his BS in psychology from Clemson University in 2003. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action at the University of Connecticut. His research interests include interpersonal coordination and affordance perception. He has examined differences in coordination between typically-developing children and those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. He has also examined how action-scaled information specifies the emergence of cooperation during social interaction. His dissertation, and main research interest, is aimed at providing an empirical and theoretical framework for understanding aspects of emotional experience from an ecological perspective. After providing a theoretical background and situating this problem within the broader context of perception, action, and cognition, his talk will focus on two studies that quantify the temporal structure of aspects of day-to-day emotional experience across shorter and longer time scales and on the coupling of affective states between persons.

March 3: Speaker, Anne Britt; Hosted by Loel Kim

Anne Britt is an associate professor in the Psychology Department at Northern Illinois University. She is a cognitive psychologist with an expertise in advanced literacy skills including argument comprehension, sourcing, and content integration. Over the past 8 years, she has conducted basic research to better understand the processes required when students comprehend, evaluate, and produce written arguments. Based on this research, she and her colleagues have created CASE (Cultivating Argument Skills Efficiently) which is a set of web-based argument modules to provide instruction and practice to improve argumentation skills (funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education). These modules have been found to be effective in teaching argument comprehension, evaluation, and production skills. Prior to CASE, she co-developed the Sourcers Apprentice and Sourcers Apprentice Intelligent Feedback (SAIF) with support from the McDonnell Foundation. The Sourcers Apprentice is a computer-based environment for teaching sourcing and content integration skills and SAIF provides individualized feedback on the essays produced in Sourcers Apprentice. She has received approximately $3.3 million in federally funded grants to examine higher-order literacy skills. Britt has numerous publications in these areas and has served on the expert panel to develop the OECD-sponsored PIAAC international survey of adult literacy for Problem Solving.

March 17: Speaker, Roger Azevedo

Dr. Azevedo is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and an affiliated member of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at The University of Memphis. He received his doctorate in Educational Psychology and Applied Cognitive Science from McGill University in 1998. He is the Director of the Cognitive Psychology Area and the Director of the Cognition and Technology Research Laboratory. His main research interests are in metacognition and self-regulated learning, complex learning, human and computerized tutoring, and intelligent computer-based learning environments. In addition to publishing over 100 articles in journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings, he has played a major role in bringing in over $8 million in grant funding during the last eleven years as either PI or Co-PI on NSF and NIH grants that test the effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems for medical and biological sciences. He has received several awards including the prestigious NSF Early Career Award. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology and a member of editorial board of several top-tiered journals. He serves on several national and international review panels (NSF, IES) and conference program committees (International AI and Education). He is an advisory board member of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center.

March 24: Speaker, Istvan Berkeley; Hosted by Roxanne Raine

Istvan S. N. Berkeley (Ph.D., 1997, University of Alberta) is an associate professor at The University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is cross-appointed in the Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS) and the Philosophy Program, in addition to having an affiliation with the Center for Advanced Computer Studies (CACS). His main research interests concentrate on the interface between philosophy and cognitive science, with particular focus on the foundations of cognitive science and issues concerning representation and embodied cognition. His research frequently employs computational methods to address philosophical conundrums. His work has been published in journals such as Minds and Machines, Connection Science and Philosophical Psychology.

March 31: Speaker, Robert Atkinson; Hosted by Scotty Craig

Dr. Robert Atkinson is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology at Arizona State University. His research explores the intersection of cognitive science, instructional design, and educational technology. His scholarship involves the design of instructional material—including book- and computer-based learning environments—according to our understanding of human cognitive architecture and how to leverage its unique constraints and affordances. His current research foci include contributing to an empirically grounded theoretical framework for using worked-out examples to support initial cognitive skill acquisition in well-structured domains, studying flow/engagement within games, and the design of multimedia learning environments that incorporate animated pedagogical agents. He has obtained—both independently and collaboratively—over $20 million dollars in grant support from a variety of sources including the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, and the Intel Corporation. His research appears in a variety of highly respected academic journals including Journal of Educational Psychology, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Learning and Instruction, Review of Educational Research, and Educational Psychologist. He currently serves on the editorial boards of five top-tier journals and is a standing member of the Institute of Education Sciences review panel.

April 7: Speaker, Michele I. Feist; Hosted by Roxanne Raine

Michele I. Feist is presently an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She received a B.A. in Spanish Literature from Northwestern University in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Northwestern University in 2000, after which she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Psychology Department at Northwestern University. Dr. Feist’s primary research interests are in lexical semantics and in language and cognition, with a particular focus on the language of space.

April 14: Speaker, David Edelman; Hosted by Stan Franklin

David Edelman is an Associate Fellow in Experimental Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute, an independent, not-for-profit scientific research organization dedicated to understanding how the human brain works at the most fundamental level. His two main areas of study at the Institute are the neural correlates of consciousness in non-human animals and the dynamic properties of mitochondria in neurons of the central nervous system. With his colleague, Dr. Anil Seth of the University of Sussex, Dr. Edelman has recently laid out a framework for the study of animal consciousness that suggests that certain fundamental properties of conscious states are amenable to study and may in fact be present in widely different phyla, from cephalopod molluscs to humans. Currently, Dr. Edelman is working with Dr. Graziano Fiorito of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn (Naples, IT) to characterize octopus visual perception using a psychophysical approach, in combination with neurophysiological recording in free behaving animals. Dr. Edelman’s cellular research concerns how mitochondria are transported throughout neurons, how these organelles are distributed in particular regions of cells (e.g., axon terminals) during different brain states, such as those underlying learning and the stages of sleep, and more generally, the link between mitochondrial trafficking and neural function. Dr. Edelman earned his B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology, with a specialization in paleoanthropology, from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1997 to 2005, he was a postdoctoral fellow at both the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, California) and the Neurosciences Institute.

April 21: Speaker, Cristina Conati; Hosted by Art Graesser

Cristina Conati is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. She received a “Laurea” degree (M.Sc. equivalent) in Computer Science at the University of Milan, Italy (1988), as well as a M.Sc. (1996) and Ph.D. (1999) in Intelligent Systems at the University of Pittsburgh. Her areas of research include User Modeling, Adaptive Interfaces, Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Affective Computing. Cristina has published over 50 strictly referred articles, and her work has received awards from the International Conference on User Modeling, the International Conference of AI in Education, the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces and the Journal of User Modeling and User Adapted Interaction. She was Program Co-Chair for User Modeling 200, and Conference Co-Chair for Intelligent User Interfaces 2009.

April 28: Speaker, James Russell; Hosted by Sidney D’Mello

Dr. James Russell is the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Boston College. His research centers on human emotion. His interest began with the question of how large-scale environments (such as homes, offices, malls) and social events (chatting with a friend, working with a team) influence emotion and thereby influence various activities and outcomes. This led to the fundamental question of how emotions can be described and then assessed. Some specific ideas pursued are a circumplex model of emotion, a prototype theory of emotion concepts, which leads to the idea that specific emotions are understood in terms of scripts, a defense of the traditional view that displeasure is the opposite of pleasure, a skeptical review of the traditional view that basic emotions are universally and easily recognized from facial expressions. More recently, the question has arisen of how these various ideas fit together within a larger framework. An analysis is being developed called "the psychological construction of emotion.". Dr. Russell received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974.

Free Outside (Science-Related) Event(s)

Try to attend one of these hikes through Overton Park.

• SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 28, March 13, 28, 10:00am to 11:30am. Meet at the end of Old Forest Lane, next to the Rainbow Lake parking lot, for a free guided 1.5-mile walk through the Old Forest at Overton Park. Kids are welcome! Questions? Email Naomi or call 901.278.2396.

Check out Citizens to Preserve Overton Park's website, here. Naomi Van Tol is a WEALTH of information on the Old Forest, and on many many local ecological and environmental issues. This tour is really really fun and easy and interesting.

A Couple of Housekeeping Notes

• Library TODAY.
• If your blog does not appear in the "Student Blogs" section to the left, then I don't have your URL. Please comment on THIS post with yourURL if you're not listed (click "show all" to make sure you're not further down the list - it's chronologically listed, so you can see all the way back to December - if it's not before that, then you're not there).
• Make sure that your blog posts are "What if?" or "Maybe." in nature. Skies the limit beyond that. Have fun with it.
  
• Finally, make sure that you're reading each other's blogs - and commenting on them!
  

Writing An Argumentative Essay

Read THIS for Tuesday. There may be a quiz.

A Few LOCAL Science-Related Organizations

Memphis Bioworks Foundation
Sustainable Shelby
BioDimensions
Agricenter International: Agricultural Crop Research Center
Infinite Enzymes LLC
Tennessee Water Sentinels
UofM Ecological Research Center
Dr. Kathy Mitchener (does veterinary stem cell and cancer research)
Stem Cell Research for Human Hearts
The National Science Foundation Biosurface Center (UofM)
Center for Biofuel Energy and Sustainable Technologies (UofM)
Center for Community Health (UofM)
Center for Earthquake Research and Information (UofM)
University of Memphis Research Institutes, Centers, and Initiatives

Welcome Back!

It's going to be a fun semester! I look forward to working with all of you - old and new!

Paragraphs & Paragraphing - The OWL at Purdue

Paragraphs & Paragraphing - The OWL at Purdue

1. On Paragraphs
What is a paragraph?

A paragraph is a collection of related sentences dealing with a single topic. Learning to write good paragraphs will help you as a writer stay on track during your drafting and revision stages. Good paragraphing also greatly assists your readers in following a piece of writing. You can have fantastic ideas, but if those ideas aren't presented in an organized fashion, you will lose your readers (and fail to achieve your goals in writing).
The Basic Rule: Keep One Idea to One Paragraph

MLA in-text parenthetical citations

The Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines require that you cite the quotations, summaries, paraphrases, and other material used from sources within parentheses typically placed at the end of the sentence in which the quoted or paraphrased material appears. The parenthetical method replaces the use of citational footnotes. These in-text parenthetical citations correspond to the full bibliographic entries found in a list of references at the end of your paper. (Note that the titles of works are italicized, rather than underlined.) Unless otherwise indicated, on-line sources follow the same pattern as print versions.

Writing a Bibliography: MLA Format

Below are standard formats and examples for basic bibliographic information recommended by the Modern Language Association (MLA). For more information on the MLA format, see http://www.mla.org/style_faq.  Later, you will need to use APA and Chicago formats (when writing scientific texts), but for now, we will stick to MLA, as per English Department requirements.

Active Verb Tenses

Simple Present
Present or Action Condition	General Truths
I hear you. Here comes the bus.	There are thirty days in September.
Non-action; Habitual Action	Future Time
I like music. I run on Tuesdays and Sundays.	The train leaves at 4:00 p.m.

team darwin