Megan Meier Case: Question Two

Realize that at the time Megan Meier set up her MySpace account she was under the minimum age that the MySpace required to participate in the website. Should there be some way to required age authentication? Would this violate any laws, amendment rights, personal privacy issues?

I kind of answered this in the last question, but I will go further into detail.

All the ways I can think of using to verify someone's age, such as entering in a SSN, an driver's license number, passport number etc., are things that I believe would turn people away from such social networking sites. I know that I wouldn't be willing to enter such personal information on the web. I honestly think that the responsibility should lie on parents and guardians. I don't believe that if the SSN (for example) was required, it wouldn't brake any sort of law or amendment rights especially because you would be giving it up willingly in order to participate in the site.

Megan Meier Case: Question One

Who is responsiable for Megan's death? Is it the people who created the ficticious charater "Josh", Megan's parents, Myspace? Perhaps provide percentages to each of these three groups as a means to measure responsibility. Is anyone else responsible?

The fact of the matter is Megan had self esteem issues before "Josh" came along, Megan's parents did all but keep her off myspace which in my opinion is perfectly acceptable especially since she monitored the conversations, and Myspace? Myspace created a GUI people use to network. How people use that networking site is their responsiblity. Yes, Myspace doesnt have a way to verify your age when you sign up, but would you rather have to enter your SSN into a public social networking site? As far as the people who created "Josh", it's unclear as to whether or not there was an adult orchestrating the act therefore adding legitimacy. Either way, Megan had created a similar false page on myspace (according to her mother's website) so she should have been well aware of this type of trick. Unfortunately, I believe the largest contribution to Megan's death came from a predisposition due to low self-esteem and hormone fluctuations due to being a teenager. I honestly cant say I could give each party a percentage for who's "fault" it is. While "Josh" and the contributing parties may have made it worse for Megan, the FBI didn't recover anything that said anything similar to "kill yourself". Even the last message she supposedly received which said something similar to "the world would be better without you" was never recovered by the FBI. The level of harassment she received was no more than kids around the country receive everyday. Without knowing more facts and having access to all the conversations Megan and "Josh" had, I can't bring myself to giving percentages of blame. I'm the kind of person who needs all the evidence/ both sides of the story.

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Question 3

Give your honest opinion on the article. Do you feel you deserve grades based on your effort or is it that you earned the grade you received because of your effort? Anything else you would like to add?

While I think that while the article had some great content, the article required little to no effort from it's author in that basically the entire article was what other people had to say on the matter. There were more quotes than anything else. However, like I said the content was good. As far as grades relating to effort. I think, while it's a great concept, it would be hard to actually do. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to actually judge the level of effort that was put into something. While I can agree that sometimes it's very easy to see that the creator obviously didn't put any effort into something, the looks of some works can often be deceiving. For instance, myself and friends have all received comments on work before that have said things like "all your hard work and effort shows" when we spent little to no effort on it. Then there's the question of what would happen to the homework assignments that are things like "answer these 5 questions from the book" or "do this activity from the book"? How can you display your level of effort when following a step by step assignment that doesn't allow for deviation or individualization? Especially if the questions from the book have a-d answers. Sure, you could assume that the student read based on the fact that they were able to answer the questions. However, the student could have skipped to the questions and looked up the answer. So when it comes down to it, grading on effort most often would mean grading on the appearance of effort which is not the same thing. Again, it is a great concept I just don't agree that "effort" is something that can always be judged appropriately.

Question 2

What do you think is causing students to feel entitled to receive a good grade? Is it because a grade of A is now the expected default for "average" work where in reality an A denotes "above average"? Are the students prior experiences in high school or earlier the cause? Are parents to cause "my child is perfect so it must be the instructors fault"?

I think that the reason students feel they should receive an A for their C level of work comes from the fact that classes they've had in the past teach them that an A is average, not above average. However, their past experience is not the root cause. I believe the root cause is our idea of "customer service". A school is a business. So, when "customers" (which depending on the grade level could be the students or the parents) complain, the business does its best to adapt to change as to not loose customers. However, WE ARE LAZY! Being lazy makes us like easy. This means that we will complain if we feel we are given too much work. As a business, schools will often try to decrease the work load as to not loose customers. One way to get around this is in high school the making of making AP (advanced placement) classes. In theses classses, you expected an increased level of work. However, in college that kind of went away. While there are classes on different levels (200lvl vs 300lvl), students most often have to take lower level classes to get to the higher level classes. There's also the fact that a lot of degrees mostly require 100lvl/200lvl classes. This would seem to say that we expect less from students today. So yes, parents thinking that the instructor is the problem is a large part of the problem because they are the "customers" complaining. However, the problem doesn't just come from the "customers" but also the employees. Many teachers have hundreds of students per term. This means that if a teacher has 120 students and s/he gives the students a 10 pg paper to do, the teacher has 1200 pages to read. Assuming the teacher doesn't just give the one assignment, this means the teacher would have to read thousands of pages per term. That's a lot of reading for one teacher and I cant say that I know a whole lot of people who are willing to read that much. This issue can lead to teachers giving out assignments that require little to not effort to grade as well as grading assignments lightly which can lead to the perception of an "easy A."

Question 1

Is professor Grossman off the mark when he says "I tell my students that if they just do what they are suppose to do they will meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C," he said "That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A." Why?

I think he's completely ON the mark. An A should be given for going above and beyond whereas a C should be given for doing the minimum required. If you do all the minimum requirements without putting a lot of effort into them, that should be considered average. However, students today see a C as not completing all assignments NOT as doing all the assignments without any effort. This probably roots from the experience of most teachers giving out assignments that are graded by giving a student (x) amount of points per portion they complete. For instance, a teacher may assign a paper in which the student receives 5 pt.s for the outline, 15pt.s for the rough draft and 30pt.s for the actual paper and as long as these requirements are met, the student gets the grade. I think part of this comes from the fact that a lot of teachers also give participation grades. For instance, my Anatomy and Physiology teacher gives 30pts just for showing up to lab. All I would have to do to get that 30pts is be there when he brings in the sign-out sheet. He also does the same thing in class; on random days he will assign group assignments for 10pts just for doing it. All in all, over half my grade in his class will be for just showing up. I could sleep all through class but as long as I am there, I can still get at least a D. I also think that teachers are too concerned with their students "suceeding" than their students learning. In otherwords, they're more concerned about what grade their students receive than what their students retain from the class. This in turn leads to giving simple assignments that take little effort from the student.