Had any homework papers recently? I hope your teacher knows about Google Doc’s new Research Tool feature!
If you have children at school (or have recently been there yourself), you’ll recognize the good old traditional assignment of the research paper.
A continual challenge for teachers is keeping up with technology, specifically, how Google and the web in general has completely changed how research is done.
Sometimes however, a teacher’s systems do not quite keep up with these advances. Take the aforementioned research paper. Very often, you’ll see teachers assign some kind of grading “points” for the research. Often they look for evidence of research in how well the paper is cited. Maybe they even give points for using the correct MLA citation format!
But, this kind of grading is becoming misplaced with things like Google Docs Research Tool. With it, students can find and automatically cite related articles and research to the theme of their paper. They can very very easily generate a related list of research, all perfectly cited in the correct format, automatically inserted into their document.
Maybe, and just maybe, they might not even read all of it!
Now, the savvy teacher will hopefully see this shortcut, but teachers should always be aware of the capability of current web tools and make sure their grading is not distorted by them.
(Pro Teacher Tip: Google the title or first sentence of student’s papers in quotes as an easy check for plagiarism)
Had any homework papers recently? Do you think the teacher was abreast of these tools in how it’s graded?
Compass Designs 