Essay #4 Reflection

I am mostly content with what I have written. I chose the subject of astronomical spectroscopy because I wanted to challenge myself. I already had an idea of how the science worked, but I knew that if I wanted to write the essay, I would have to do hours of research to properly understand it. I am aware that I have barely skimmed the surface of the science, but one can only put so much into just a few pages.
             As far as content goes, I think I was able to cover a huge amount of information that I myself was not entirely familiar with, and put it into simple terms. Albert Einstein once said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." I used this my base for how I would write it, preferring to use the technique of putting everything into historical context. By explaining the chronological history of the science, the reader is more able to remember the content by thinking about it like a story.
             To test this, I asked my father, a drama and Shakespearean literature teacher for more than a decade, to read the essay. Other than a few unclear sentences and grammatical errors, he was able to understand the concept of the science.
              If I were to change the essay, I would have been more specific about the math that went into the discoveries, especially on the subatomic scale. Maybe that will be for other astronomy classes that I take, since this course has increased my interest in the subject.

Progress of Essay #4: Gaps in the Spectrum

When I first came up with the idea for this essay, my immediate thought was that I wanted to challenge myself. The subject material, which concerns the use of the colour spectrum to determine the elemental makeup of stars, is not common knowledge, and I have no right to say that I know a lot about it either. However, I have found that the subject greatly intrigues me, and it leaves me with a yearning to know more about it.
             Part of my essay discusses the various types of light, and how the human eye is incapable of detecting most of it. An idea which came up randomly while watching television was to demonstrate how blind we really are. To do this, I turned off all of the lights so that it was pitch black, held the remote facing my phone's camera, and took photos when I pressed any of the buttons on the remote. At the tip of the remote is a receiver, which communicates signals via infrared light. What is clearly visible is a blue light being detected by the phone as a result of translating otherwise invisible light frequencies into light that humans can perceive. I have included one of the photos within my essay.
             I do not intend to give away all of the science within this post before the essay is handed in, but this is an idea that I'm very happy with, because it means that instead of simply reporting what I have researched about other peoples' work, I have personally demonstrated the science.
             In terms of the flow of the essay, a lot of it may be based in history, telling the story of how one piece of evidence led to another, when, where, how, by whom, and under what context, because for example, had Sir William Herschel not left a spare thermometer for the sake of measuring standard room temperature while measuring the temperatures of the individual frequencies of the colour spectrum (ROYGBV), he would have never discovered infrared light.
             I feel it is good to use history as a means of explaining the development of science and gradual gathering of evidence, especially within the context of this essay, which is entirely based on direct evidence.
           

Annotated Bibliography exercise

Adin Doyle

Response to Malesic: How Dumb Do They Think We Are

Adin Doyle

Jonathon Malesic approaches plagiarism from a more personal point of view. When he first started encountering it, he felt that the students were insulting his intelligence, because of how easy it was to spot what had been plagiarized and what was original. However, he came to find that many of his papers contained minimal plagiarism to some extent, with some students being more clever about where they hid their unoriginality and some being more blatant about it.

            Malesic then begs the obvious question: why do students plagiarize? With all the different kinds of plagiarism, many of it being unintentional, he determines that the ones who are more obvious about it simply do not care about learning the material, and simply want the grade that they thought they could get away with.

            I imagine that plagiarism was easier to get away with before the internet. As long as one didn’t use any books that the professor would be reading any time soon, one could have a much higher chance of getting away with it. With the coming of the internet comes tools such as Turnitin, which Susan Blum explains is a search engine used to test the legitimacy of students’ writing.

Perhaps the reason we see such inflation in student plagiarism is partially that it is now more difficult to get away with it. Another side to the internet factor is that perhaps some students do not think that some professors (more likely the older professors) properly know how to use and manipulate the internet in the way that they do, and therefore will not get caught. This could be one of the ways in which Malesic believes students, especially the smart ones who are capable of reading properly and composing well written essays, are insulting his intelligence by simply caring about the grade instead of the learning process.

Response to Susan Blum: Academic Integrity and Student Plagiarism

Adin Doyle

Susan Blum’s approach to the subject of plagiarism and academic plagiarism branches from outside just the classroom. While recognizing the issue at hand, in which students will often incorrectly cite parts of their papers, usually by error, or sometimes intentionally paraphrase without citation to see if they can get away with it, or even turn in someone else’s paper that they had nothing to do with in the first place.

            Instead of blaming it entirely on the students, Blum gives us her opinion as to just why they plagiarize intentionally or unintentionally. When it is intentional, it is possibly because students value the grade and the status that it can get them over the value of the knowledge they would have acquired from actually doing the work. Because this is a part of the world that often values status and knowledge existing in the same person, plagiarizing is seen as a problem of integrity because the student does not actually know the material, and instead cares only for the grade. This is an understandable viewpoint, because in many cases the student will know the material but will be unable to get the grade they want. In other parts of the world, like in China, plagiarism is not considered as much of an issue because of their concept of conformity throughout the people. Status is valued over knowledge because the structure of the hierarchy there, so plagiarism is more accepted if it is for the sake of achieving status in the end.

            Of course, a student may accidentally plagiarize because they simply do not know how to correctly cite certain sources or put them into the correct format depending on the circumstance. I for one sometimes find myself searching Google for the correct MLA format for in-text citations.

            Blum believes that the issue should be examined not from the viewpoint of either the teachers or the students. Instead, proper education of the importance of academic integrity and how to correctly cite sources is required, without the use of treating students who plagiarize as criminals. Students should be brought to look at academic integrity as something to strive for, because if they receive the grade they want, it will be more deserved, and the student will know the material.