Educational Websites for Teachers

When I was in High School, my English teachers made good use of a website called "turnitin.com." This website is designed so that teachers can catch students who are attempting to plagerize essays or other pieces of writing and discourage other students from doing so. Whenever I wrote an essay, I had to submit it on "turnitin.com" and print out a receipt to show that I had done so before I could actually hand the essay in to my teacher. When I "turned in" my essay, I essentially gave the website the right to search through my essay and compare every word of it to any online source or other student's work that had already been "turned in." If the website detected that any part of my essay was not my original work and no source was cited, that portion of the essay would be flagged so that the teacher would know that I had plagerized either another person or an online source. Although I never plagerized my essays, I do know some people that did and this website was a great way for teachers to find out exactly who those students were and give them a fair punishment. Use of this website enables teachers to easily see which students are producing honest work and which are not. I think that this website is a great tool to use in the classroom because it forces students to think for themselves and produce their own work instead of merely copying from someone else.