ICT News!

For staff and pupils of DBIS

Students turn to web plagiarism
Nov 7th 2008
Vol. 04 No. 01

By Dickon Hooper, BBC News

Plagiarism by university students across Bristol

ICT Top
Tip
and Bath is on the increase, according to figures
obtained by the BBC.
The highest figures come from the
University of the West of England (UWE), which
identified more than 300 cases in the last
academic year, up from 245 in 2005/06.
This represents about 1% of its students, and
could be a result of its solid detection procedures,
according to the University.
At Bristol University, more than 70
cases were reported last year (from 12,000
undergraduates), against 46 at Bath University
(13,000 undergraduates). Bath’s figures more
than doubled from 2005/2006.
Plagiarism can be hard to track, with the
internet offering a proliferation of sources. But
universities employ a variety of means. Keith Hicks, from UWE, said: “Plagiarism software is no real substitute
for staff being in touch with their students and their material.” And he added: “The internet can actually make it
easier for us to find the plagiarised material if it is not referenced.”
The real problem is contract cheating. One growing source for students is essay-generating websites.
A quick search throws up a plethora of alternatives for the cash-rich, time-poor student, ranging from the
customised essay to the generic.
Fast Formatting
One of our favorite hidden gems is
“Essay mills recycle essays and our detection service picks them up,” said Richard Edwards, assistant t h e Fo r m at Pa i n t e r. T h i s Pa i n t b r u s h
registrar in the University of Bristol’s Education Support Unit. icon should appear by default on
“The real problem is contract cheating where students put their work out to tender. The chief weapon t h e s t a n d a r d t o o l b a r. To a d d i t t o
against this is the academics doing the marking.” t h e t o o l b a r, g o t o To o l s | C o m m a n d s ,
Essay-generating websites tend to go out of their way to shun any suggestion that their work should be navigate to Format, and drag the
used verbatim, claiming it is for research purposes only. Pa i n t b r u s h i c o n t o a t o o l b a r.
But not everyone is convinced, and as one Bristol undergraduate discovered, quality is far from guaranteed.

Online Action could mean

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trouble in the real world!

The Associated Press
reported that a Japanese woman
hacked into her online “husband’s”
account and killed the avatar. While
the report said that she had no
intent to cause the other player
physical harm in the real world,
she now faces a prison term up to
5 years or a fine up to $5,000 for
“illegally accessing a computer and
manipulating electronic data,” or in
other words, hacking.
Apparently, her reasoning
for killing off the virtual husband was
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK
Thanks to all those who came
to the ICT PD session on
Wednesday 5th November.
The topic discussed was ICT
and Pedagogy, and participants
were encouraged to talk about
the use of ICT in their lessons to
support, enahnce and extend
children’s learning.
because she suddenly found herself
divorced without any reasons
given, without any prior warning.
The woman originally obtained
the 33-year-old office worker’s
login information while the virtual
couple was still happily married.
Thus, out of anger, she took her
revenge. The man called the police
once he logged in and discovered
that his Maple Story alter ego was
murdered. Although the woman has
not been formally charged, she was
arrested at her home in southern
Factors which teachers need to
be taken into acount
• clear identification of how
ICT will be used to meet
specific subject objectives
to improve pupils’
attainment;
• ensuring that pupils have
adequate ICT skills to
achieve those objectives;
• planned match of pedagogy
with the identified purpose
of ICT activities and
learning outcomes.
Miyazaki and taken 620 miles across
Japan to Sapporo, the city where
the male player resides.
Try to remember that
ICT should :
• Ensure that the learning
outcomes can be achieved;
• Enable the learner;
• Ease and supports the task;
• Enhance the task’s quality
and value.
Barker and Franklin (1998)
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highlighting text.
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Ongoing
Staff
Development
D o n’t fo rg e t t h at yo u c a n
adress your IC T training
needs by dropping in to
the Primar y IC T suite on
M o n d a y ’s f r o m 3 . 1 5 - 5 p m ,
or the Kindi Suite from
2 . 3 0 o n T h u r s d a y.
Singapore MOE Launches Third Masterplan for ICT in Education
The Ministry of Education has
developed the third Masterplan
for ICT in Education (2009-2014).
The third masterplan represents
a continuum of the vision of the
first and second Masterplans i.e. to
enrich and transform the learning
environments of our students
and equip them with the critical
competencies and dispositions to
succeed in a knowledge economy.
The broad strategies of the third
Masterplan for ICT in Education are:
• To strengthen integration of
ICT into curriculum, pedagogy and
assessment to enhance learning
and develop competencies for the
21st century;
• To provide differentiated
professional development that is
more practice-based and models
how ICT can be effectively used to
help students learn better;
• To improve the sharing
of best practices and successful
innovations; and
• To enhance ICT provisions
in schools to support the
implementation of mp3.
Strengthening Integration of ICT
into Curriculum, Assessment &
Pedagogy
ICT will be more extensively
integrated into the planning, design
and implementation stages of
the curriculum, assessment and
pedagogy. There will be greater
alignment of students’ learning
outcomes in the syllabi, national
examinations, and classroom
experience to 21st century skills
such as IT skills, and the ability to
communicate persuasively and
collaborate effectively. Students
will be required to use ICT to look
for information, synthesise reports,
Alarm raised on teenage hackers
Increasing numbers of teenagers are
starting to dabble in hi-tech crime, say
experts.
Computer security professionals say
many net forums are populated by
teenagers swapping credit card numbers,
phishing kits and hacking tips.
The poor technical skills of many young
hackers means they are very likely to get
caught and arrested, they say.
Youth workers added that any teenager
getting a criminal record would be
putting their future at risk.
“I see kids of 11 and 12 sharing credit
card details and asking for hacks,” said
Chris Boyd, director of malware research
at FaceTime Security.
Many teenagers got into low level crime
by looking for exploits and cracks for their
favourite computer games.
Communities and forums spring up
where people start to swap malicious
programs, knowledge and sometimes
stolen data.
Some also look for exploits and virus
code that can be run against the social
networking sites popular with many
young people. Some then try to peddle
or use the details or accounts they net in
this way.
Mr Boyd said he spent a lot of time
tracking down the creators of many of
the nuisance programs written to exploit
users of social networking sites and the
culprit was often a teenager.
From such virus and nuisance programs,
give feedback on each others’ work
and collaborate with peers within
and outside school.
Differentiated Professional
Development
School leaders can create the
environment for teachers to
reflect and learn from each other
about effective teaching practices
that incorporate ICT use in the
classrooms to achieve desired
learning outcomes for their
students.
In addition, MOE will train a pool of
“ICT specialist teachers” with strong
pedagogical groundings to model
and lead professional development
efforts within and across schools.
A learning roadmap will also be
developed to help pace teachers in
learning how to effectively use ICT
in their classes.
Improve the sharing of best practices
and successful innovations
To improve the sharing of best
practices, MOE will support the
establishment of a network of
educational labs where innovations
can be prototyped and tested.
These labs will provide the latest
technologies to promote exploration
of learning possibilities. They can
also serve as training ground for
pre- and in-service teachers.
MOE will continue to support
schools to innovate in the use of
ICT and to facilitate sharing of
good practices among schools
through programmes like the
FutureSchools@Singapore and
LEAD ICT@Schools.
Enhanced ICT Provisions
Accessibility of ICT to students will
be increased through more flexible
and mobile infrastructure provisions
such as wireless internet access,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7690126.stm
he said, many progress to outright
criminal practices such as using phishing
kits to create and run their own scams.
“Some are quite crude, some are clever
and some are stupid,” he said.
The teenagers’ attempts to make money
from their life of cyber crime usually
came unstuck because of their poor
technical skills.
“They do not even know enough to get a
simple phishing or attack tool right,” said
Kevin Hogan, a senior manager Symantec
Security Response.
“We have seen phishing sites that have
broken images because the link, rather
than reference the original webpage, is
referencing a file on the C: drive that is
not there,” he said.
Symantec researchers have collected
many examples of teenagers who have
managed to cripple their own PCs by
infecting them with viruses they have
written.
piloting 1-notebook-to-1-pupil ratio
in more schools, and higher data
bandwidth to the Internet.
Background
The Masterplans for ICT in Education
drive the use of ICT in education.
The underlying philosophy of the
Masterplans is that education
should continually anticipate the
needs of the future and prepare
pupils to meet those needs.
The first Masterplan for ICT in
Education (1997 — 2002) laid a
strong foundation for schools to
harness ICT, particularly in the
provision of basic ICT infrastructure
and in equipping teachers with
a basic level of ICT integration
competency, which achieved a
widespread acceptance for its use
in education.
The second Masterplan for ICT
in Education (2003 — 2008) built
on this foundation to strive for
an effective and pervasive use of
ICT in education by, for example,
Chris Boyd from FaceTime said many
of the young criminal hackers were
undermined by their desire to win
recognition for their exploits.
Many teenage hackers publicise their
exploits on YouTube
“They are obsessed with making videos
of what they are doing,” he said.
Many post videos of what they have done
to sites such as YouTube and sign on with
the same alias used to hack a site, run a
phishing attack or write a web exploit.
Many share photos or other details of
their life on other sites making it easy for
computer security experts to track them
down and get them shut down.
Mr Boyd’s action to shut down one
wannabe hacker, using the name
YoGangsta50, was so comprehensive
that it wrung a pledge from the teenager
in question to never to get involved in
petty hi-tech crime again.
Mathew Bevan, a reformed hacker who
strengthening the integration of ICT
into the curriculum, establishing
baseline ICT standards for students,
and seeding innovative use of ICT
among schools.
For more information on the
Masterplans for ICT in Education,
follow the links from the following
website:
http://wiki.nus.edu.sg/
pages/viewrecentblogposts.
action?key=ICTSGedu
was arrested as a teenager and then
acquitted for his online exploits, said it
was no surprise that young people were
indulging in online crime.
“It’s about the thrill and power to prove
they are somebody,” he said. That also
explains why they stuck with an alias
or online identity even though it was
compromised, he added.
“The aim of what they are doing is to
get the fame within their peer group,”
he said. “They spend months or years
developing who they are and their status.
They do not want to give that up freely.”
Graham Robb, a board member of the
Youth Justice Board, said teenagers
needed to appreciate the risks they took
by falling into hi-tech crime.
“If they get a criminal record it stays
with them,” he said. “A Criminal Record
Bureau check will throw that up and it
could prevent access to jobs.”
Anyone arrested and charged for the
most serious crimes would carry their
criminal record with them throughout
their life.
Also, he added, young people needed to
appreciate the impact of actions carried
out via the net and a computer.
“Are they going to be able to live with
the fact that they caused harm to other
people?” he said. “They do not think
there is someone losing their money or
their savings from what they are doing.
“For a kid, getting a criminal record is
the worst possible move.”