Give them even four hours and you could actually call some people, maybe interview someone at a local school about how they’re using. Ask a school principal how their teachers are using it, or to guide you to a teacher that is using the best. That’s original research, and it is focused on place. Nothing you find online, unless you get very lucky, will tell you what the people closest to you are doing, and often that is some of the most valuable information because it tells you something about your immediate culture.

How are computers used in classrooms in Bangor, Maine versus Paris, France? Now there’s a question you aren’t going to find research to even “get the ball rolling” for online. You’ll have to roll up your sleeves and do hard work. Even ERIC wont help you then.

But the point I’m approaching is that that the academic overachievers, by whatever measure was used, are the ones with the greatest propensity to reproduce, store and organise the work of others before writing. Some might call this research, but surely the line between bower-birding one’s way through the literature one sentence at a time and plagiarism must be fairly thin where this practice is used? After all, there must be more than a casual link, maybe even a causal one: the students that borrow lots, excel. The moral and academic problem here is, how much of that excellence is owed to the work of others? Or is it simply the time-honoured standing on the shoulders of giants? One wonders what the impact of comparison tools like Turnitin has been in the academy – surely it must have been substantial. Anybody know?

It’s interesting that no one picked up the phone and tried to interview someone on this topic, or even walked down the hallway to interview a teacher.

We need an Oxford PhD to tell us this?

Google is tool, just the like the typewrite.
As tools evolve and new tools arrive, why would anyone expect better journalism research?

Good journalism, like most good things, takes work and imagination.