posted
I teach and am known around my building for my videogame and Sci-fi/Fantsy obsessions. In the past I have been approached by a number of teachers about writting peices students have turned in. I have caught a number of book and video game jacket rip offs. However A teacher just turned in a piece to me that has me stumped. I know Baldur Gate is a PC game and that is one area I know very little about. The piece is titled Tales of the Sword Coast. I googled it and found a few hits to the game but has there ever been a novelization? My first instinct is to scream plagerism because it's 27 pages long, written very very well, and includes prelude, chpter numbers and titles, language such as "Aye, Ye be done at last" and pictures at the top of the heading that look computer generated. this is not standard work for students in my building. So before I run and tell her to bust the poor kid, I thought I'd get an opinion here. thanks.
posted
Don't know but it's a sixth grader and I teach eith grade. I've been skimming through this thing and I find it very hard to believe that he did. Too many concepts and terminology that are way foreign to the kids in my district. I am in a very urban district and although we have some intelegent kids with great reading and writting skills I've never seen anything this well written before. I want to give the benefit of doubt but it just really doesn't seem likely.
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posted
Oh... and yea, I actually do think it is a work of fan fiction, just not this kids. If I didn't have so many blocks on my school computer I'd probably have a better time finding it but as it is everything with the word sword, gets kicked out and 95 percent of the baldur gate sites are game related and I can't pull them up.
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posted
Tell me what to search for, and I will do it here for you. I don't have all day, but I do have about an hour or so, if you want to do it that way...
Another way to do it would ask to see his rough draft, or make him rewrite it with you (or another teacher) watching. Even if it isn't exactally the same, he/she should be able to replicate a lot of it if he really wrote it himself.
I had a teacher throw an original story, in a fairy tale format back in my face, literaly, at about that age, because as she said " There is no possible way you wrote that on your own, it is too well put together!".
posted
Kwea, thank you but it's ok. I think we've dealt with the situation. The teacher called home and is going to have a sit down with the mom and student. He said his brother, who is a senior, helped write the story but it was a very professionally done piece. Seriously if you had seen it you would have very little doubt that it was someone elses work. I mean the story was broken up into part one, chapter one and so on and so forth. Plus I compared the writting style to some of his other pieces and they just don't match. The kid does seem to be a fairly gifted writter but there were just too many red flags. I really wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt here but it seems that isn't going to happen. Oh, well. hopefully it doesn't discourage the kids from writtting. Live and learn, at least I hope.
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posted
well, if he wrote it but his brother helped him arrange it, it might explain some of it.
Just keep an open mind. When I got a chance to write something like that, about a topic I knew something about and that I loved, I would spend HOURS on it that I never would have spent on a normal school project, because it was FUN! That might be part of what happened here as well.
posted
Well, since I'm not oficially handleing it, I was only called in as a consultant, I can't make any promises. I could be wrong, and truely I hope I am because our writting teacher would love to have someone that gifted next year, but I've usually got pretty good instincts about this stuff. I haven't been wrong yet and I honestly doubt I am this time. Oh well, I'll just have to wait and see what come of the parent conference.
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