I agree with Lessig that the “free culture” that we used to live in is now a “permission culture,” which has placed a burden on society. We live in a society with overly strict copyright laws that hinder creativity and experimentation. Lessig focuses on the theme of common sense in his book and how the new regulations consist of extreme penalties for vague infractions. On page 185 of the book, Lessig states how absurd it is that we live in a world where a doctor that negligently removes the wrong leg of a patient will be looking at a smaller fine than an individual illegally downloading two songs off of the internet. Another important point that Lessig makes is that not only is it expensive to obtain permission to use someone’s property, it also can be very difficult to track down copyright because it is hard to determine who has ownership to certain works.
I completed the sampling project, which was an enjoyable experience. It was somewhat difficult at first because I knew my stance right away when we got the assignment, but had to spend time thinking on how to visually present my argument. Once I got a few ideas, more came to me as I searched for pictures on the internet. It was fun to come up with ways to take pictures of my friends to represent the argument I was making. I also liked working with software that I had not used before. Towards the end of my second visual representation of copyright laws, I was feeling very comfortable using the software.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Sampling Experience
After learning about the details of the sampling experience in class today, I am looking forward to working on the project. This semester so far for me has consisted of writing many papers, including two major ones that were due today, so I am excited to have an assignment that is visual and does not involve formal writing! I also like the idea of this project because I have not worked much with Photoshop or software similar to it. I had never heard of the program that we were introduced to today in class and I enjoyed experimenting with it. I work in an information lab in a library and I often get questions concerning Photoshop. I usually do not have many suggestions for these individuals because I am not very familiar with the program. I hope that this project will help me become more comfortable using photo software so I am better able to assist people at my job and so I can use it personally for other tasks.
I think that visual representations are excellent and creative ways to get messages across to people and to spark discussion around topics. There is no wrong or right way to interpret art. When we looked at the graffiti mural today in class, it was really interesting to listen to the various interpretations of the artwork made by my classmates. Every interpretation was based around institutionalized inequalities and injustices in our society. I think that this is a perfect example of how art can make people aware of problems just as well as text can. Also, many people are able to express themselves better through visual art than they can with words.
I think that visual representations are excellent and creative ways to get messages across to people and to spark discussion around topics. There is no wrong or right way to interpret art. When we looked at the graffiti mural today in class, it was really interesting to listen to the various interpretations of the artwork made by my classmates. Every interpretation was based around institutionalized inequalities and injustices in our society. I think that this is a perfect example of how art can make people aware of problems just as well as text can. Also, many people are able to express themselves better through visual art than they can with words.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Plagiarism Contest
At the end of class on Monday, we divided into small groups and exchanged our plagiarized papers. In class today, we had a contest to see who did the best job in our group of concealing plagiarism in their paper. I had fun searching different sites trying to find passages that were plagiarized. It was much harder than I thought it would be to locate plagiarism, which made me realize the valiant effort teachers have to make, in some cases, to discover plagiarism. Of course, instances where students do not even bother to change the font or copy an entire paper word for word does not take much patience to find.
My group members did a great job of concealing plagiarism in their papers by changing words in passages, citing some sources in the paper to throw off the reader, and using unique sources. Jenny won the contest in our group because no one was able to find the creative source she used. She used one source for her paper, which was a video tutorial that was linked to a website. This was a really good idea because I actually had looked on the site and did not even think to click on the numerous links that were listed.
One factor that I think made it difficult to locate plagiarism in the papers I read is that I was not familiar with the style of writing of my group members. This made it hard to determine what did and did not sound like them. I also think that it was hard to find plagiarism because I was not very knowledgeable on the topics I read. I think that if I had more base information on the topic it may have been easier to spot plagiarized passages. Overall, I found the plagiarism experience to be challenging, but also interesting to see the amount of effort it takes to locate plagiarism.
My group members did a great job of concealing plagiarism in their papers by changing words in passages, citing some sources in the paper to throw off the reader, and using unique sources. Jenny won the contest in our group because no one was able to find the creative source she used. She used one source for her paper, which was a video tutorial that was linked to a website. This was a really good idea because I actually had looked on the site and did not even think to click on the numerous links that were listed.
One factor that I think made it difficult to locate plagiarism in the papers I read is that I was not familiar with the style of writing of my group members. This made it hard to determine what did and did not sound like them. I also think that it was hard to find plagiarism because I was not very knowledgeable on the topics I read. I think that if I had more base information on the topic it may have been easier to spot plagiarized passages. Overall, I found the plagiarism experience to be challenging, but also interesting to see the amount of effort it takes to locate plagiarism.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Plagiarism Reflection
The plagiarism assignment was much more difficult than I had anticipated. The challenge was to write a paper on any topic and plagiarize at least 25 percent of it, but no more than 75 percent. I decided to write a plagiarized research paper on anorexia nervosa because I know a lot about the disorder and wanted to write on a topic that I was familiar with. A few of my friends and family members have struggled with anorexia and I have taken several courses in high school and college that devoted a section to eating disorders. The purpose of the paper is to inform the general audience about the prevalence, causes, health complications, and treatment of anorexia.
When our class first received the assignment, I thought that it would be easiest to plagiarize 75 percent of the essay. I found out quickly that this is not true. After I decided to write a paper on anorexia, I began to look for sources. I was frustrated to discover that several internet sites I looked at contained identical information. Then I realized that this made sense because anorexia is an illness identified by specific diagnostic criteria, symptoms, contributing factors, and health consequences. Therefore, informative sources on anorexia will contain identical and overlapping material.
I centered in on a few sources and began to write my paper. I originally thought that I would write a few paragraphs of the paper myself and then take the other 75 percent from other sources. I started copying and pasting passages from sites and placed them in my paper, but I ran into a big problem. The language that the sites used did not sound at all like my style of writing nor did the passages flow correctly in the paper. I ended up taking all of the plagiarized sections and paraphrasing them in my own words. I also wrote additional sentences inside paraphrased sections in order to emphasize points I thought were important and to make the essay more informative. I ended up removing certain plagiarized sections in my paper and wrote about the sub-topic in my own words based on knowledge I have on anorexia. This resulted in the proportion of plagiarism in my paper being a lot less than I had anticipated.
I did not feel bad ethically during this writing project because I continuously reminded myself that the assignment is to plagiarize. I know that I would never be tempted to plagiarize because the consequences are severe and I do not believe in cheating. A point that really hit home for me about plagiarism is a comment a classmate, Emily, made yesterday during class discussion. She said that she would rather stay up until 4 in the morning and write a paper in her own words then be lazy and plagiarize a paper because the 2 weeks of waiting to see if you got away with cheating would be unbearable. I could not agree more. I would number one, feel very guilty, and two, I think I would have an anxiety attack waiting to see if my professor discovered that I had plagiarized. When Scot told our class about experiences he and other colleagues have had with plagiarism, I was blown away. I cannot believe that students would really copy and paste sections in their paper without even bothering to change the font to match the rest of their paper. I also think it is outrageous that someone would take an entire essay from the internet and hand it in, does the individual really think he or she won’t get caught?
This project made me realize how difficult it is to plagiarize. This paper would have taken me a lot less time and energy if I were actually writing it rather than plagiarizing it. I spent so much time trying to make sections from sources sound like myself that it would have been much easier to just have used my knowledge on the topic and write the paper on my own.
When our class first received the assignment, I thought that it would be easiest to plagiarize 75 percent of the essay. I found out quickly that this is not true. After I decided to write a paper on anorexia, I began to look for sources. I was frustrated to discover that several internet sites I looked at contained identical information. Then I realized that this made sense because anorexia is an illness identified by specific diagnostic criteria, symptoms, contributing factors, and health consequences. Therefore, informative sources on anorexia will contain identical and overlapping material.
I centered in on a few sources and began to write my paper. I originally thought that I would write a few paragraphs of the paper myself and then take the other 75 percent from other sources. I started copying and pasting passages from sites and placed them in my paper, but I ran into a big problem. The language that the sites used did not sound at all like my style of writing nor did the passages flow correctly in the paper. I ended up taking all of the plagiarized sections and paraphrasing them in my own words. I also wrote additional sentences inside paraphrased sections in order to emphasize points I thought were important and to make the essay more informative. I ended up removing certain plagiarized sections in my paper and wrote about the sub-topic in my own words based on knowledge I have on anorexia. This resulted in the proportion of plagiarism in my paper being a lot less than I had anticipated.
I did not feel bad ethically during this writing project because I continuously reminded myself that the assignment is to plagiarize. I know that I would never be tempted to plagiarize because the consequences are severe and I do not believe in cheating. A point that really hit home for me about plagiarism is a comment a classmate, Emily, made yesterday during class discussion. She said that she would rather stay up until 4 in the morning and write a paper in her own words then be lazy and plagiarize a paper because the 2 weeks of waiting to see if you got away with cheating would be unbearable. I could not agree more. I would number one, feel very guilty, and two, I think I would have an anxiety attack waiting to see if my professor discovered that I had plagiarized. When Scot told our class about experiences he and other colleagues have had with plagiarism, I was blown away. I cannot believe that students would really copy and paste sections in their paper without even bothering to change the font to match the rest of their paper. I also think it is outrageous that someone would take an entire essay from the internet and hand it in, does the individual really think he or she won’t get caught?
This project made me realize how difficult it is to plagiarize. This paper would have taken me a lot less time and energy if I were actually writing it rather than plagiarizing it. I spent so much time trying to make sections from sources sound like myself that it would have been much easier to just have used my knowledge on the topic and write the paper on my own.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
My Ghostwriting Reflection
I had a very positive ghostwriting experience. I chose to write for a very close friend of mine, who is in the nursing program at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. She is a Certified Nursing Assistant and has another year left in the program before she obtains her degree in nursing. The writing task that we decided to do is an essay about her personal values and beliefs as a nurse. She has never had to do a formal paper on her values, but she says that it has been the topic of discussion in several of her courses. We chose this assignment because I wanted to write something important to her that represents who she is as a person. This writing task also gave me an opportunity to learn about her experiences in the nursing profession.
I believe that our interaction in the writing process of this essay made our relationship stronger. After agreeing on a topic, I asked her about her core values in a fairly in-depth interview over the phone. She talked to me about her specific beliefs and how she uses them in her profession. I was shocked when she described a shift she worked in the Cardiac Care Unit where a patient that she was assigned to died unexpectedly due to heart complications. She witnessed the medical staff trying to revive him and watched his life end. She struggled to compose herself in order to console his family and continue her shift providing proper care to her other patients. She told me about other intense incidents that occurred during her experience working in Hospice and how these situations have changed her as a person. We are very close, yet I was hearing about these experiences for the first time and it made me realize that I would not have been able to maintain composure and contain my emotions in these instances. The interview allowed me to learn more about her as a person and increased my respect for her. This portion of my ghostwriting experience also alerted me to the fact that we do not usually talk about her job as a nurse because she may have thought that it would not be interesting to me. I really enjoyed hearing about her values as a nurse and am going to continue talking to her about her experiences in the program because it plays a tremendous role in her life and it reveals who she is as a person.
The actual writing of the essay was both hard and easy. We attended the same high school and took the same writing courses so our writing structure is very similar. We were both taught to have an introduction, conclusion, and body paragraphs that begin with a topic sentence that indicates what will be contained in the paragraph. When I began writing the essay, it was going faster than I had anticipated. I took detailed notes during the interview which provided me with enough material to write about so I did not have to make up her opinions or guess what her values are. Also, due to our similar writing structures, I was able to set up the essay how I normally would. The most difficult process of the writing experience occurred after I completed the first draft of the essay. We both had busy weeks so it was hard to find a time that worked for us to go over the corrections she made on the draft I sent her. It was also frustrating to me that she did not have time to read it on the day that I emailed it to her because I was hoping to complete the assignment somewhat early because I had assignments for other classes I had to get started on.
After she read the essay, we talked over the phone about the changes she made to the draft. The majority of the changes she made were word choice corrections. In the draft I created, there were words that she does not use in her writing vocabulary so she put in words that she would normally use. She also changed specific words in order to make the essay flow better and sound more like her. An example of this is that I use transitions between my body paragraphs such as “in addition to.” She crossed that out and suggested that I use “another value…” because she would not use that transition in her writing. She added more information about certain experiences that I talked about in the paper and added a few sentences about content that we did not cover in the interview. This was very helpful because it provided more examples of how she demonstrates her core values as a nurse and made the paper stronger.
My ethical opinions of ghostwriting did not change during this process. The entire time I was working on her essay I did not have ethical concerns because I knew that she was not going to be turning in the essay for a course or using it for anything. Knowing this helped me focus on the task at hand and not worry that I was doing something wrong or doing something that could have potential harmful consequences. Throughout my ghostwriting experience and discussions in class about ghostwriting, I have swayed back and forth between whether or not I think it is an ethical practice. I truly believe that it depends on the situation. If I were to engage in ghostwriting in my future career, the person I was writing for would have to share similar values to my own. I would not be comfortable writing something that could influence others if it were against the beliefs I hold. Overall, I enjoyed this ghostwriting experience because I was able to learn more about a close friend through listening to her experiences and values in the nursing profession.
I believe that our interaction in the writing process of this essay made our relationship stronger. After agreeing on a topic, I asked her about her core values in a fairly in-depth interview over the phone. She talked to me about her specific beliefs and how she uses them in her profession. I was shocked when she described a shift she worked in the Cardiac Care Unit where a patient that she was assigned to died unexpectedly due to heart complications. She witnessed the medical staff trying to revive him and watched his life end. She struggled to compose herself in order to console his family and continue her shift providing proper care to her other patients. She told me about other intense incidents that occurred during her experience working in Hospice and how these situations have changed her as a person. We are very close, yet I was hearing about these experiences for the first time and it made me realize that I would not have been able to maintain composure and contain my emotions in these instances. The interview allowed me to learn more about her as a person and increased my respect for her. This portion of my ghostwriting experience also alerted me to the fact that we do not usually talk about her job as a nurse because she may have thought that it would not be interesting to me. I really enjoyed hearing about her values as a nurse and am going to continue talking to her about her experiences in the program because it plays a tremendous role in her life and it reveals who she is as a person.
The actual writing of the essay was both hard and easy. We attended the same high school and took the same writing courses so our writing structure is very similar. We were both taught to have an introduction, conclusion, and body paragraphs that begin with a topic sentence that indicates what will be contained in the paragraph. When I began writing the essay, it was going faster than I had anticipated. I took detailed notes during the interview which provided me with enough material to write about so I did not have to make up her opinions or guess what her values are. Also, due to our similar writing structures, I was able to set up the essay how I normally would. The most difficult process of the writing experience occurred after I completed the first draft of the essay. We both had busy weeks so it was hard to find a time that worked for us to go over the corrections she made on the draft I sent her. It was also frustrating to me that she did not have time to read it on the day that I emailed it to her because I was hoping to complete the assignment somewhat early because I had assignments for other classes I had to get started on.
After she read the essay, we talked over the phone about the changes she made to the draft. The majority of the changes she made were word choice corrections. In the draft I created, there were words that she does not use in her writing vocabulary so she put in words that she would normally use. She also changed specific words in order to make the essay flow better and sound more like her. An example of this is that I use transitions between my body paragraphs such as “in addition to.” She crossed that out and suggested that I use “another value…” because she would not use that transition in her writing. She added more information about certain experiences that I talked about in the paper and added a few sentences about content that we did not cover in the interview. This was very helpful because it provided more examples of how she demonstrates her core values as a nurse and made the paper stronger.
My ethical opinions of ghostwriting did not change during this process. The entire time I was working on her essay I did not have ethical concerns because I knew that she was not going to be turning in the essay for a course or using it for anything. Knowing this helped me focus on the task at hand and not worry that I was doing something wrong or doing something that could have potential harmful consequences. Throughout my ghostwriting experience and discussions in class about ghostwriting, I have swayed back and forth between whether or not I think it is an ethical practice. I truly believe that it depends on the situation. If I were to engage in ghostwriting in my future career, the person I was writing for would have to share similar values to my own. I would not be comfortable writing something that could influence others if it were against the beliefs I hold. Overall, I enjoyed this ghostwriting experience because I was able to learn more about a close friend through listening to her experiences and values in the nursing profession.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Ghostwriting
Today in class Deborah Brandt came in and talked with us about her paper “Who’s the President” and her experiences with ghostwriting. She talked about how she studied ghostwriting in the employment force. I was amazed when she told us that out of about 40 to 50 people she interviewed, between 14 to 17 of them had experience ghostwriting in their job! Before discussing ghostwriting in class, I did not realize how frequent it occurs. I only really thought of ghostwriting existing in political speeches.
After today’s discussion, I still feel torn on whether or not I think ghostwriting is ethical. I believe that if a person has someone write something for them in order to achieve money, status, or power, I think it is wrong. However, at the same time, someone could have really good ideas, but may have difficulty expressing those ideas into words. I think that ghostwriting is wrong when someone is capable of completing the writing, but is too lazy to do it. I feel like I’m constantly going back and forth between whether or not I think it is acceptable. I think that it really depends on the situation. Our class today made me aware of the fact that I would not be comfortable writing something for someone that did not share similar values and beliefs to my own.
I’m still contemplating what topic to do my ghostwriting project on. I’m going to be ghostwriting for my good friend, but at the moment she does not have any writing assignments. We are going to make up an assignment for me to do, but I’m still trying to come up with something! If you have any ideas, feel free to let me know :)
After today’s discussion, I still feel torn on whether or not I think ghostwriting is ethical. I believe that if a person has someone write something for them in order to achieve money, status, or power, I think it is wrong. However, at the same time, someone could have really good ideas, but may have difficulty expressing those ideas into words. I think that ghostwriting is wrong when someone is capable of completing the writing, but is too lazy to do it. I feel like I’m constantly going back and forth between whether or not I think it is acceptable. I think that it really depends on the situation. Our class today made me aware of the fact that I would not be comfortable writing something for someone that did not share similar values and beliefs to my own.
I’m still contemplating what topic to do my ghostwriting project on. I’m going to be ghostwriting for my good friend, but at the moment she does not have any writing assignments. We are going to make up an assignment for me to do, but I’m still trying to come up with something! If you have any ideas, feel free to let me know :)
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