Judging Your Originality in a Cut and Paste World
Note to Self
WNYC Studios
4.7 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2015
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Turnitin and programs like it are used to fight plagiarism in a third of high schools and half of colleges nationwide. The system is pretty much air tight... but it also reveals a pretty fundamental truth: It's tough to say anything new about Romeo and Juliet, especially when you're a teenager responding to the same old prompt.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello friend, if you're looking for an episode of New Text City, you found it. |
| 0:04.1 | Except we're now called Note To Self. Same show, just a different name. We hope you like it. |
| 0:11.6 | I'm a new summer Odie, and this is WNYC's Note To Self. |
| 0:16.1 | I feel a little bit crazy. |
| 0:19.3 | Yeah, but likes are also a big thing. Make you warm likes. |
| 0:23.0 | The show where you and I search for balance in the digital age. |
| 0:26.8 | And this is embarrassing to talk about. |
| 0:29.2 | When I think of the enormity of it all, I just begin to feel helpless. |
| 0:33.2 | This week, how originality gets judged in a cut and paste world. |
| 0:40.3 | Okay, so imagine it's exam time, finals, young adults across the nation are |
| 0:46.4 | cooped up inside writing essays explaining why Holden Caulfield is an unreliable narrator, |
| 0:53.0 | or contrasting Nick Carroway and Jay Gatsby as archetypal heroes. |
| 1:00.1 | Thank God, most of us don't have to do that anymore, right? |
| 1:03.3 | I mean, especially because, and I had no idea this was going on, |
| 1:06.9 | students are evaluated differently these days on their writing. |
| 1:10.4 | Not only do they have to stress about understanding |
| 1:13.4 | Daisy Buchanan's various layers, they also have to consider their own originality or lack of it. |
| 1:20.4 | And they are held up to standards in a way that I absolutely was not in college or high school. |
| 1:26.2 | And this is all thanks to new technology. |
| 1:29.0 | My friend and colleague, note to self-producer, Alex Goldmark is here to help explain. |
| 1:33.4 | Hi, Manouche. Yeah, so if you're a parent with a kid already in high school, |
| 1:37.8 | or if you are in high school or college, maybe you heard some of this. |
... |
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