Homework – Week 2

Important Note: This, like all homework, is an individual assignment. The College values honesty as a key principle in the College environment and in the workplace. Academic work submitted by a student is evaluated on the assumption that the work presented by the student is his or her own, unless designated otherwise. The College considers Plagiarism, (presenting someone else’s work, in whole or in part, as your own), and the facilitation of plagiarism, (one student sharing work with other students), to be unacceptable and will impose sanctions, which may be - a requirement that the student complete a course on academic integrity, a requirement that the student submit additional work, a grade of zero for the assignment, a grade of F for the course or suspension from the College. A record will also be kept in the student's file. For full detail, see Algonquin College Directive E43 – Plagiarism.

But what about copying directly from the Web, the text etc.?This is NOT plagiarism, AS LONG AS you attribute the quote (ie give the source). In the Homework and In-class Discussion Forums, a simple URL is enough. More formal attribution is required in the Case Studies, and is explained there. Note, however, that you are unlikely to get full marks for a post that is a simple copy/paste, since it is unlikely that it will fully answer the question. You will need to do some thinking and add words of your own.

In the Homework Discussion Forum, find the thread for this week, and use the Reply button to post an answer to the following question:

Choose one of the ‘ripples’ that are resulting (or may soon result) from the use of computers (choose one from the Chapter One discussion of ‘issues’ or ‘threats’, or find your own) and explain it briefly with an example. Now give at least one concrete step that might be taken to build a ‘breakwater’ to minimize the ill effects.

Note: if you post early, your prof may respond with a comment that indicates something missing. If you reply to his comment with a better post, you will earn more marks.

P.S. Don’t forget that (as long as you were in class this week) you can still add to our in-class discussion threads until midnight Saturday of this week. You will earn 1 mark for an OK post, 2 for a Good post and 3 for an excellent one (out of 2 marks).

Here’s an example: If the question is, “How can we reduce negative impact of computers on the environment”, you could say:

- “Peeple should reduce power used by there computers” – worth one mark. It’s true, but not very clear, and has 2 spelling errors (can you spot them?). It also shows no evidence of having read the text!

- “We should reduce power usage by turning off our screens when not in use, rather than using a ‘screen saver’ which does NOT save power” – this is worth 2/2 – more specific, and spelled correctly, and contains an idea from the text.

- You could add to the above a tip on how to turn off the screen automatically in Windows, or an estimate of just how much power a typical machine could save in a month. This is worth 3/2, since it has very helpful info found by research beyond the text.