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ON-LINE RESOURCES
The 8th grade teachers are going to implement two web resources called Turnitin.com and epals.com. The programs provide new and exciting opportunities for collaboration between students in our school and other schools, journaling, getting feedback on writing, tracking writing progress, and many others. The teachers have used the programs last year and found them to be creative and effective learning tools.
Turnitin.com is a web based resource that features a check for plagiarism, a grammar check, and allows for more effective and timely feedback for student papers. There are several safety features which allow for management and collaboration from teachers to student, as well as student to student. Through epals.com students will get a monitored email account that will be used to turn papers into turnitin.com and may be used to correspond with students in other schools.
Our district is striving to work and implement 21st century skills in our students and these websites will be a step in that direction. All the students will be assigned an access code number which will activate an account in order to be able to save and then store and collaborate on student work. As for the teachers, it frees us up to really look at content and make helpful suggestions to redirect and improve student writing and communication.
If you would like more information, the following links include information about Internet safety tips and the district policies regarding appropriate use of the network/computers:
http://www.epals.com/groups/support/pages/internet-safety-tips.aspx
http://www.hasd.org/District/Policies/05000Students/5075_Internet_Safety.pdf
http://www.hasd.org/District/Policies/05000Students/5062_Student_Use_of_the_Internet.pdf
In addition, the following links provide information regarding student rights with the services:
http://www.epals.com/groups/about/pages/terms-of-use.aspx
http://turnitin.com/static/footnote/usage_policy.html
If using these online tools is a problem, please let us know. We are hoping to begin using the web-based resources in the next few weeks. Please check and sign below so we can begin the process of getting students account information.
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