annaluna2369 already mentioned the Turnitin suit on Howard's blog. I think if you look at a followup post on her expert witness report for that, you'll see some things that are agreeable. And interesting in light of how they relate to her relatively older musings in the book we're reading:
- Genre and situation matter: Turnitin "quantifies and universalizes writers' use of sources, rather than acknowledging that the acceptability of source use is governed by local conditions such as the assignment, the student's grade level, and the syllabus for the course"
- Better ways to avoid plagiarism exist than fascist policing: "There are much better ways of teaching writing pedagogy than using PDSs in general, and Turnitin.com in particular. These better ways include (a) sequenced assignments, so that students are mentored through the process of producing major papers; (b) the use of common sources to begin a writing project, so that the class can work together through the problems of source use, and then each student can branch out into his or her own research; (c) instruction in critical information literacy, so that students locate compelling, pertinent sources rather than basic documents produced immediately in a quick Google search" (and she gives plenty more too)
- "The use of [Turnitin and similar programs] casts instructors and students as adversaries and describes writing and reading as mechanical procedures of extracting and citing information"
I just find her conflation (variously) of what I would separate into plagiarism, patchwriting, and mimesis (not that I would stop there in my methodology) confusing. What is okay? What is not okay? What is natural?
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