A really, really long time ago, when I was an undergraduate, my freshman english class spent a lot of time covering citation. It was explained to me that using other people's work without proper credit was unethical and was, in fact, fraud. This made me a little paranoid about using source material and perhaps I overcompensated by citing everything I could think of.
I'm guessing that citation isn't taught the same way anymore. I'm going through my student's work, and on at least a half-dozen papers were whole paragraphs and sections of material directly lifted from websites. Pure plagiarism.
Now, I'm not a rocket scientist even though I work with rocket scientists, but even I can google a few obviously-out-of-place sentences and find those kinds of links.
I'm going to propose to the Department that they subscribe to Turnitin.com next semester. It's taken me a great deal of time to go through each paper because now I'm deeply concerned about plagiarism.
Some students just don't know how citations work, and I try to work with them when I can.
But that isn't all of them. For the ones who just try to get away with laziness, it makes me angry that some students think I'm stupid.
There was discussion about some classes using LiveJournal blogs for class.
While I appreciate the idea, I'm not so sure that it's the right audience. Check out the "10-most-recently-uploaded images to LifeJournal."
LifeJournal comes with a ready-made community far more than other blogging systems. I'm not sure if you'd want to insert a class into that conversation.
I think the responsibility of public writing is a GOOD thing.
It throws aside the unrealistic expectation of privacy. Google's Gmail service reminds us that even our email could be potentially scanned by bots and placed in a public storage facility, potentially permanently. Certainly if you use a University system you must anticipate that there will be archives, and they could be more robust than you imagine.
Anytime you write electronically you write for more audiences than you may realize. Documents flow like water in electronic format, often landing someplace unexpected. It's important to understand this and be willing to let your words stand for themselves.
That said, it's disingenuous to throw students into a public writing arena without a detailed discussion of what it means to write in public.
It's easy to be lulled into thinking that the internet is a big place and that your student's journals on Blogger won't be viewed by anyone, and you may be right. Until you are not. And when you are not right, that has consequences for you students that could go far beyond the context of your class. With preparation, students can more realistically gauge the rhetorical situation of public writing and carry that lesson over to their other writing.
When students write in public, they must anticipate an audience that they can neither see nor (usually) meet. They also must anticipate the permanence of their public words and understand that their words represent them. Their words are important in forming an online impression of who they are, so they must be comfortable with their words and be willing to live with their errors as part of the never-ending learning process.
Whether teachers like it or not, the rhetorical situation of EVERYTHING students write for a grade is that the teacher is the only audience member. Everything a student writes is filtered through that lens first and through the context of the assignment only second. If I tell them to write a resume to be turned in and graded, they're writing or revising it with me in mind no matter what I tell them.
Placing student writing in a public arena changes the audience dynamics. Even if nobody ever reads it (and how would they KNOW?) the potential for a whole new audience is there. It gives students a whole other world to consider.
And who is to say that you can't "seed" student blogs with commentary from other teachers, friends, and other random individuals that might not otherwise visit on their own.
Imagine creating a facilitity the size of Rhode Island. Stock it with engineers, technicians, and systems personnel whose sole purpose and interest is in nuclear bombs.
Then tell them that you've entered into a testing moratoreum and they can't blow up bombs anymore. I wonder if they spend time downloading testing films from the archives.
Keep them in a wasteland in Nevada on the mission of perpetual readiness. In some ways, it's a tougher assignment than their original mission.