The website Turnitin.com was once used by many teachers at AHS to check students’ work for plagiarism. This school year, however, students will no longer be using Turnitin.com to submit homework assignments.
AHS chose not to renew its contract with the site due to the increase in prices to check students’ work. The price to check assignments for plagiarism was originally $0.75 per student, but now the prices have gone up to $1.55 per student.
Even though this may not seem like a much of an increase, it makes a big difference in the amount of money that the school would have to pay if it were to renew the contract. If Fairfax County were to renew the contract with Turnitin.com, it would cost over $2,000.
“If it’s easy to use I’ll use it,” IB Biology teacher Claudia Lemus said.
The new system, which has been in development for the past few years, is called Safe Assign and will be used through Blackboard. The school will not be paying for Safe Assign, as Fairfax County will be the one paying for the new program.
As a new program, teachers are still anxious to see how user friendly Safe Assign will be and if it will be worth learning how to use.
Lemus was surprised when her students were not able to turn in their IB Biology summer assignments to Turnitin.com.
“Turnitin.com was significantly important in my class because it helped to raise the standard of authenticity and it made my job easier in that I didn’t have to check students’ work through Google,” Lemus said.
Since the AHS staff has not been trained in how to use Safe Assign, many teachers are concerned about how the new program will work. Safe Assign was made available the first week of school, and teachers will have to attend training this week to learn how to use the program.
Rebecca Bartelt, who will be facilitating the training, feels that Safe Assign will not be any harder to use then Turnitin.com.
“Give Safe Assign a chance,” Bartelt said.
Turnitin.com is supposed to be a teaching tool just like Safe Assign. In order for teachers to use Safe Assign, they will have to follow an acceptance school policy. No one knows yet how to feel about this change, but as the year goes on, students as well as teachers will get used to the new program.
By Anais Flores
Photographer
