Korea Herald 20080624

18

COMMUNITY

TUESDAY JUNE 24, 2008

If you plagiarize, expect an ‘F’ Expat living is a page dedicated to the issues that affect expats' daily lives. It is your page, where you can share stories about your life in Korea. Send story ideas to Matthew Lamers at [email protected]

The classroom no longer has 4 walls Marshall McLuhan media guru once stated: “There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” This is true about how education will work in the future. Classrooms will be student-centered, and learning will not be teacher-dependent. The classroom will be anytime, everywhere. Learning will happen through sharing, interaction and “connectivity” between peers. Ning helps make this future happen. Ning is a free social networking service that allows teachers (or anybody else) to create their own social network. Perhaps you’ve heard of Facebook — America’s version of Cyworld. Well, with Ning, you can have your own service — not just a simple page. Ning’s founder and CEO Gina Bianchini explains: “What’s different about Ning from other services is that we give you your own video site like YouTube, or social-networking site like MySpace. But, unlike being a page in somebody else’s service, it’s yours. You get to choose what it’s about.” Teachers can create their own social network for their classroom, school or organization using Ning. Also, there is no need to be a tech-savvy geek. No need to know code, javascript or all that technical jargon. Ning makes it easy. You can create your own learning network in just minutes and have your students connecting and learning through discussion and sharing. How does it work? First, you need to sign up at Ning.com; it takes just seconds. Give your network a name and you’re off. You will get your own unique address — for example — myclass.ning.com. As a Ning network creator, you now can set up your network, invite others to join, personalize the look (color and layout), and add cool features in a click — like music and, video players, extra pages, forums, photo albums, blogs and all sorts of other cool widgets. Members can form their own groups within your network so they can even have networks within networks. One really cool feature is that you can customize the language using their language editor. Don’t like the word “discuss?” You can change it in an instant to “chat about.” With the language editor, you can even put your Ning network into multiple languages. You’ll get lots of help in making and customizing your network by joining Ning Network Creators (networkcreators.ning.com). Online safety is always a concern among educators. Ning offers network creators three levels of network privacy (and also many levels of privacy for individual members). 1. Totally public — This is the default setting, and anyone can see everything without joining. 2. Semi-public — Anyone can see the main page, but to interact and view any further content, you must join. 3. Private — Students must join before they can see or interact on the network.

The academic plague called “plagiarism” has a fascinating etymology, as I have recently learned, for it penultimately derives from the Latin word for “kidnapping,” plagium, from plaga, “net” — an obviously handy device for nabbing the unfortunate individual to be abducted and held for ransom. More directly, “plagiarism” stems from the Latin plagiarius, by way of the obscure English synonym “plagiary.” A plagiarius was a kidnapper! I had never realized that plagiarism was such a serious crime, but, armed with this borrowed erudition, I henceforth intend not merely to flunk plagiarists, but also to arrest and march them off to jail, where they can reflect on their crime and reform their behavior. Students shall learn that plagiarizing a term paper has dire consequences indeed. Many plagiarists, however,

Jeffery Hodges on Language believe themselves too clever to get caught. For instance, some who plagiarize from online websites, and imagine themselves cunning, will borrow a passage from one online source but cite a different one. Such individuals think that I will check only the cited source, see that the topic is the same, find no plagiarism, and therefore conclude that all is well. Such plagiarists misjudge me, and therefore make careless mistakes. One such cyberplagiarist recently submitted a paper on vivisection that briefly summarized the history of this experimental science, mentioning the pre-Socratic medical theorist Alcmaeon, who lived in the Greek colony Croton on the

southern Italian coast and vivisected animals to demonstrate that cutting their optic nerve left them blinded. The plagiarizing student cited a rather lengthy article on vivisection, perhaps thinking that I would not bother to read it. Well, I did not bother to read it; I merely had my trusty computer search the article for “Alcmaeon,” and the name did not appear. Obviously, the student had found that name in some other uncited source. My suspicions aroused, I selected a phrase likely to have been copied from a source, plugged it into Google’s search engine, and quickly found it in a brief, fourparagraph encyclopedia entry on vivisection that happened to mention Alcmaeon of Croton. Reading through the entry, I found entire stolen sentences and determined that my piratical student had kidnapped

Alcmaeon and netted much else from that single, short entry. Further investigation established that the student had not used the lengthy article at all. I confronted my student with the proof. Usually, plagiarists bow to that evidence and confess. This one, however, proved cheeky and tried to deny the obvious. I called BS on that. Seeing that I accepted no denials of what was so easily proven, the student turned truly cheeky, pointed to the grade of “F,” and informed me: “I can’t accept this.” Profoundly annoyed now, I retorted, “You have to accept it. Listen carefully. You are being held to global standards now. If this were an American university, you might be expelled from school. You would certainly get an ‘F’ for the course. Now, you stop complaining and go work on cleaning up this essay for the

final draft. Get rid of the plagiarism, do the work yourself, and turn in a better essay.” The student protested against my unfairness because some students had submitted no first draft at all, so a plagiarized paper should at least receive a grade higher than “F.” “If you plagiarize, you get an ‘F,’” I stated. “That’s automatic for egregious plagiarism. But only the final essay counts toward your grade.” At that, all protest stopped, leaving only the plagiarist’s irritation at getting entangled in his self-woven dragnet. If only all student protests were so easily thwarted. Jeffery is a professor at Kyung Hee University and can be reached through his blog, Gypsy Scholar, at gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com — Ed.

David Deubelbeiss on Teaching There are many levels of moderation, so the network teacher always has complete control over the network’s content and discussions. Sound too good to be true? It isn’t. Ning does come with Google ads, but grade 7-12 educators can have an ad-free network. Find out how to do this and get more information on regarding how to use Ning for educational purposes at education.ning.com. Within Ning, there are many great educational sites for teachers to learn about the growing Web 2.0 role in education. Classroom 2.0 (classroom20.ning.com) is a great place to start. There are thousands of teachers discussing all aspects of teaching, and they share ideas, lessons and resources. EFL Classroom 2.0 (eflclassroom.ning.com) offers a similar network for English teachers. There are many more networks (Ning now has over 400,000 unique networks) on all kinds of subjects — librarians, technology, theory, young learners, university classes and games. The list is virtually endless. Use the powerful Ning network search engine to find what interests you. Students love chatting and discussing, and this is a great way to foster language learning. We learn by doing, and a Ning network provides many ways to practice. You can practice by having discussions or just chatting. Further, by providing students with Ning, you can help them develop the most important skill of being a self-motivated learner. For example, I use Voicethread (Voicethread.com) a lot with my own students (Voicethread is a site where students can speak using a microphone), and simply embed the voicethread on my site so students can use it in class. You can do the same with videos or presentations. Embeding content is just one example of using Ning to give students learning opportunities outside the traditional classroom. The basic appeal of Ning for teachers is that it is a quick and easy way to get your students discussing course content and learning in a community. Its flexibility and customization is what makes Ning special. The teacher has so many options, and so does each member or student. If you do have some tech skills, you can acquire your html code and build your own unique site using the Ning application. So, get Ninging today! There is a world of learning that awaits both you and your students. The classroom is no longer limited to a space between four walls; it is the connected world. We are all crew and creators of our own learning on this spaceship Earth. David Deubelbeiss teaches and trains Korean and foreign English teachers at the Seoul Education Training Institute and can be contacted on EFL Classroom 2.0 (eflclassroom.ning.com). — Ed.

Expat Living on Facebook Expat Living is finally on Facebook. Starting in July, check out the Facebook group “Expat Living (Korea)” regularly for free restaurant and concert ticket giveaways. You have to be a member of the group to be eligible for the free stuff. — Ed.

PHOTO CHALLENGE — Paprika was the flavor of the day in the city of Ichon, recently, which is how it should be every day.

Cultural awakening Being an international exchange student in Korea was indeed a unique chapter in my life. Meeting new people and making new friends from all around the world has widened my eyes and heart and has enabled me to truly thrive in today’s globalized world. During the semester I studied at Yonsei University, my view of Korea and life in general, moved from curiosity and surprise to acceptance and understanding. I am Malaysian Chinese and graduated with a degree in mass communication from Murdoch University in Australia. I spent one semester at Yonsei University’s International Division as an exchange student and lived at International House. I am currently preparing to start a master’s degree in law, majoring in international law. When I was studying in Korea, I experienced two completely different worlds: one inside Yonsei University’s International Division and one outside in Korea society. Those of us living at International House — students from all around the world — mainly spoke English as we shared our culture, language, study and, most importantly, our thoughts on our Korean experiences. Most of us found it challenging to communicate with Korean friends. We were not familiar with the various social formalities which seem to be very important even among students. We soon discovered that we should not to be too critical or straightforward as this was regarded as offensive or rude. We came to understand that it was only after an extended introductory chat that our Korean friends would

Letter from Wendy Loh feel comfortable to then talk about what was really on their minds. Above all, we found the intense stress and pressure on Koreans to “study, study, study,” quite bizarre to say the least. It was hard for us to relate to this mentality. For us, we were in Korea to experience the joy of learning. For many Koreans, it seemed that study was a duty to be suffered. Such cultural differences are the main challenge faced by international students and other businesspeople in Korea. Its cohesive and homogeneous culture is very deeply rooted and many international visitors are not used to formalities such as bowing, honorific forms of speech, and deference to “seniority” regardless of ability or performance. However, I soon discovered that by understanding, accepting and practicing these customs myself, I was more easily accepted by the Korean community. In other words, I learned that there was a time and place to act according to each nation’s own “code of conduct.” It may take us a little longer to adjust to the code in Korea than in other countries, but is not impossible and should not be undervalued. Whatever initial compromise some of us may feel in following a different code, we usually find ourselves rewarded sooner rather than later, by the pleasures we gain from interacting with Koreans like

members of the same family or community. Life inside Yonsei’s International Division, where more than 200 international students gathered every day, was completely different. It was truly multicultural and globalized. The challenge for me there was to remember the names, background, language and different cultural idiosyncrasies of each fellow student. Some students didn’t bother. I can understand that it is more comfortable for people to befriend others from the same country or who speak the same language. But I understood the immense value in making friends from as wide a circle as possible. During the semester, I made friends with students from France, Canada, China, Finland, Japan, Germany, Mongolia, Russia, Taiwan and the United States. To Korean students considering their future, I strongly recommend an overseas study experience, even if it’s short — maybe even only one semester, like me. The important thing is to make the most of it by challenging yourself to interact with as many nonKoreans as possible. Like me, you will probably be surprised at how much you can learn about the world, and have fun at the same time, regardless of cultural differences. I must give sincere thanks to my home university in Australia, Murdoch University, and to Yonsei University for such a precious opportunity. It was a learning journey full of laughter and new experiences. I will forever remember my days in Korea as a wonderful part of my life and a cultural awakening.

William George (thewilliamg.blogspot.com)

In focus: Landscapes By David Smeaton

I’ve really started to enjoy photographing landscapes. Can you give me some tips to improve my landscape photography? Christina, Seoul. Landscapes are great fun. Many travelers find themselves with lots of opportunities to photograph landscapes and nature. So, it’s handy to have a couple of tricks up your sleeve to make the most of your shots. Here are some handy hints for shooting landscapes. 1. Get up high. A high vantage point often gives you quite a commanding view and can create a sense of awe in your photos. 2. Shoot early or late. When taking photographs, it’s always best to shoot in the morning or late afternoon. This is particularly true for landscapes; colors are more natural and the light is less harsh. Your photos will come out looking much better. 3. Reflections: Including water in your photo is a great trick for giving the shot an extra dimension. Use rivers, lakes, ponds or other water features to your advantage. 4. Tripods: Use a tripod when possible. This will give you a much more stable platform and more control over your camera settings. You can use longer shutter times and shoot in lower light. 5. Wide-angle lens: Use the right lens for the job. A wideangle lens, somewhere between 10 mm and 18 mm, will give you much more distance and you can get a whole lot more in your frame. 6. Filters: A circular polarizing filter is your best friend to give your colors more punch. An ND filter can also reduce contrast and you’ll capture more details in your photos. 7. Focus: Use lower apertures,

such as f16 or f22, to give your photograph much more depth. Focus on the foreground, and your background will still appear to be in focus. In low light, you’ll need a tripod to ensure that your aperture (depth of field) is sufficiently low. If there is something in the foreground, such as rocks in a river, then use that as your main focal point. A foreground object helps frame the scene and gives the image a more three-dimensional appearance. 8. Framing: Control your frame and be aware of what elements you want to ‘frame out’ of your shot. Use the rule of thirds to include some sky or water in the foreground. Frame out unwanted trees, grass in the foreground, or other distractions. 9. Be patient: If you arrive at your location in the middle of the day, take a few shots, have lunch, or look around. Find some shade and rest until the sun has cooled off. You need to be prepared to wait for just the right conditions; otherwise, your photos will never look their best. If you’ve made the effort to trek all the way out to a secluded spot, then at least put in the effort to get your photos right. 10. Experiment: Don’t be afraid to be creative. Try bracketing or similar techniques which you can use to create HDR photos. Another good trick is to use a slow shutter speed to blur the image of water. Infrared landscapes are also very popular. Happy shooting! Send David a message at [email protected] or visit his website at www.davidsmeaton.com. If you want to be a part of the weekly Photo Challenge, join the “Seoul Photo Club” group at flickr (flickr.com/groups/seoulphotoclub). — Ed.