🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <10...@ttidca.TTI.COM> holl...@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath) writes:
>In article <1990Feb28.2...@athena.mit.edu> ers...@athena.mit.edu (Ellen R. Spertus) writes:
>}... to try to keep
>}students from reusing papers, they kept a file of old junior themes ...
>
>}... The teacher told us the department was considering making
>}students turn in the floppy disk they did their work on.  He couldn't
>}understand why the students thought this idea was funny.
>
>Neither can I.  Yes, the students can keep a copy of the disk.  So?
>Nothing kept the students from making copies of their note cards and old
>themes, either.  The point is the department can build a machine readable
>database of papers.  That would make copy detection _much_ easier -- which
>is the whole point.
>
>Sounds more like a stupid student trick to me.

No way.  You vastly overestimate the intelligence of a high school
English department.  The reason they wanted the disks was so that
students couldn't just give each other electronic copies to modify.
This was of course ridiculous, because all the students would have
backups anyway.  The English department probably didn't own any
computers, and certainly lacked the sophistication.  The disks would
have been IBM, Apple (II and Mac), TRS-80, and who knows what else.
I could imagine a college trying to do what you're describing, but
it was definitely NOT what my high school intended.