Teaching & Technology

Would you submit your paper to Turnitin.com?

It sounds like a useful tool for aiding teachers, professors, and college admissions staff in identifying essays that have been plagiarized.  According to the website, Turnitin.com (“Turn it in”), “Ensures original work by checking submitted papers against 17+ billion web pages, 200+ million student papers and leading library databases and publications.”

Turnitin.com is a useful tool, when used correctly.  Let me say that caveat again, when used correctly.  The website searched thousands of databases and will identify phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that appear verbatim elsewhere. And there is bound to be phrases and even sentences that could be identified as plagiarized because they are commonly written together.  “The boy walked the dog to the park,” is a sentence of my own creation.  But if someone turned in a creative writing piece with the same sentence, it could potentially be flagged as plagiarized.  The fact of the matter is, I could submit a three page essay to Turnitin.com and because of these common phrases, the resulting percent given by Turnitin.com for how much of my paper is plagiarized could be as high as 30%.  [This actually is the average percent I've received on work that I wrote myself.]

Turnitin.com emphasizes that it only identifies potential issues and it is up to the teachers, professors, and admissions staff to look at what was flagged and make a judgement call.  If multiple sentences in a row or paragraphs have been plagiarized, then there is an issue.  But those grading the papers (or the ones writing them) should expect a 0% plagiarism score.  TurnitIn.com’s blog Words & Ideas wrote:

There is a very distinct difference between what Turnitin flags as matching text (aka: similarity index) and plagiarism. Turnitin will highlight ANY matching material in a paper—even if it is properly quoted and cited. Just because it appears as unoriginal does not mean it is plagiarized; it just means that the material matches something in the Turnitin databases.  We leave it to the instructors to look at a paper and the originality report to make the determination of whether or not something is plagiarism, and to what extent—intentional plagiarism, unintentional plagiarism, improper/lack of citation, or mere coincidence. Best practices from instructors suggest that Turnitin OriginalityCheck be used as a teaching tool to address citation and academic honesty, not only as a punitive tool.

As I somewhat mentioned, admissions staff are now able to use Turnitin.com to identify plagiarized admissions essays.  This helps admissions staff make well-informed decisions about candidates when there are more applications than spots available.  A recent article in the Los Angeles Times details how admissions staff members have used Turnitin.com.

The student’s admissions essay for Boston University’s MBA program was about persevering in the business world. “I have worked for organizations in which the culture has been open and nurturing, and for others that have been elitist. In the latter case, arrogance becomes pervasive, straining external partnerships.”

Another applicant’s essay for UCLA’s Anderson School of Management was about his father. He “worked for organizations in which the culture has been open and nurturing, and for others that have been elitist. In the latter case, arrogance becomes pervasive, straining external partnerships.”

Sound familiar? The Boston University student’s essay was written in 2003 and had been posted at businessweek.com. The UCLA applicant was rejected this year — for plagiarism.

So should you force your students to use Turnitin.com?  With the exception of a district-wide or school-wide policy, the choice is yours.  But be sure to educate your students before you have them upload their paper to Turnitin.com.  The last thing you want is angry parents (or students) complaining about how the paper is original yet it came up 20% plagiarized.  Some parents make not accept this from their child and punish them because they don’t understand what Turnitin.com does and doesn’t do.  And of course, DO NOT punish students simply based on the numerical score.  Review the paper and the flags yourself.  Plagiarism is taken very seriously so be sure you have your evidence before you accuse someone of plagiarizing.

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There has been a big push towards using digital textbooks in schools across America and the globe.  Apple just recently gave the movement a giant shove toward digitalization with revamped iBooks app and  iTunes U.  But I haven’t pronounced the print textbooks market dead yet.

Sure I’d love to eliminate having my student’s lugging around a 6lbs literature textbook among 5 other textbooks in their backpack.  Perhaps phasing out of individual copies of textbooks and only having one classroom set would be a feasible idea – but what if the student does not have access to a computer or tablet?  Or that if lending the student the device would require a parent to sign a form that says they will be liable for all damages, including loss – and the parent says no?  Digital textbooks have a promising market in the middle to upper class schools and charter schools, but not in poor neighborhoods.  Thus, there will be a decent market for print textbooks, albeit smaller than it is now.

All the digital textbook information I see right now ties textbooks to specific devices.  Textbooks published through Apple’s iBooks can be published elsewhere, but Apple still takes its large fee.  Textbooks on the Nook and Kindle are pretty much only for their devices.  If the tablet market isn’t going to let all textbooks be available on all devices, the print textbook market will never die.  Perhaps the publishing companies will sell their own tablet for their own books.  Instead of 6 heavy textbooks, students will carry 3-4 tablet devices.  Still pretty expensive and not entirely what the digital textbook market is aiming to do.

Oh but wait, aren’t students supposed to take notes and read textbooks at the same time?  True students can flip between the textbook app and the notebook app to write notes, but what about drawing charts?  I’m all for typing notes in class, but sometimes it’s just quick to have a piece of paper and a pencil to scribble my notes and diagrams on.  We would be wasting time trying to teach kids how to make a ven diagram on their notebook app than it would take to draw the circles on a paper.  Speed is important, especially with the hundreds of benchmarks the government continues to thrust at teachers to have students be proficient in their education.

Just as eReaders and tablets will never kill the paperback book, they will not kill the textbook market either.

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Sources:

Bilton, Ricardo. “Apple’s textbook plan’s biggest flaw is that it’s tied to the iPad | ZDNet .” Technology News, Analysis, Comments and Product Reviews for IT Professionals | ZDNet. ZDnet.com, 19 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Jan. 2012.   Link to article

Faas, Ryan. “Apple’s new vision of education.” computerworld 21 Jan. 2012: n. pag. ComputerWorld. Web. 24 Jan. 2012.   Link to article

Understanding the mindset of students is a key element in understanding why students may “go through the motions” but never learn a thing.  Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, is the product of her entire researching career on mindsets.

Mindset thoroughly explains the fixed mindset and growth mindset through years of research and numerous examples, with the goal of helping people change.  Have I changed as a result of reading her book?  No, because, according to her definition, I already have a growth mindset—I learn from my failures.  When I do not receive the grade I expected, I review the assignment myself for errors.  If I do not understand why my answer is not the best choice, I then seek out my professor to discuss my answer versus the best answer.  I do possess some qualities of a fixed mindset because I tell myself “I am smart” and expect my intelligence to take me where I want to go (but not without hard work). Of course, as I grew up I changed from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset as my understanding of the world expanded.

Although Dweck’s mindset theory makes many valid points, I find her research to be questionable, examples extraneous, and conclusions to be common knowledge.  There are a vast number of “studies” that are thrown in so casually, without circumstantial details, that I find her research data to be perplexing and inaccurate, such as her examples of students and children.  It is difficult to list all the qualities of a fixed mindset or a growth mindset because nearly every other paragraph is overshadowed by a case study of athletes, CEOs, famous people, etc.  And once I found her conclusions?  There was nothing new to learn.  Substitute “fixed mindset” with “closed-minded” and “growth mindset” with “open-minded” and the conclusions are the same as those common knowledge terms.  In fact, the most fascinating concept in her book is that her entire book read as though she has a fixed mindset and therefore was attempting to prove the legitimacy of her research and be showered with praise because she worked hard for decades.

Prior to reading this book I already planned to apply mindset theory to my lessons, only I did not call it mindset theory.  I have a 5×7 Moleskine book where I have notated some lesson and project ideas for students.  Each one of them has two parts, the object the student will create and a reflection paper.  The reflection paper requires students to explain his/her process, what he/she learned from working on the project, and what the student would do differently in the future.  This forces them to not just slap a project together, but to reflect on why they did what they did, to learn something about themselves/time management/their creativity, and to analyze errors and learn from them.  My hope is eventually the students will unconsciously reflect on assignments from other classes and become a better student which, in turn, could affect their home life and even their career.  A student’s mindset is very powerful and influential; therefore I will ensure all my students have a growth mindset by the time they leave my classroom.

The article’s headline on USA Today reads, “Parents question lethal force on 8th-grader with pellet gun”. Yes, Jaime Gonzales Jr., 15, was shot to death by police after he brought a .177 caliber pellet gun to school on Wednesday in Brownsville, TX.

Why did he bring the pellet gun to school?  How/where did he obtain the pellet gun?  These are questions his parents and the community are asking police – questions that will never be answered because the police used deadly force.  There are so many questions regarding the police force’s judgement to use deadly force that the officers who responded to the 911 call by the administrators have received death threats.

According to the USA Today article, “two officers fired three shots, striking Gonzalez at least twice, after he failed to comply with ‘numerous commands’ to drop the weapon, said Interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez.”   Gonzales’ father, Jaime Gonzalez Sr.  asked aloud, “Why was so much excess force used on a minor?  Three shots. Why not one that would bring him down?”  Others question why deadly force was the “only option”?  What about a beanbag gun or a taser? they ask.  There is speculation that he was suicidal…is this how we help suicidal teenagers?  Death by cop?

Three shots were fired as per police protocol.  For Gonzales, it was two in the chest and one “[in] the back of the head.”  Police released photos of the pellet gun that showed it ” resembled a semiautomatic handgun”.  Instead of firing bullets, it “uses compressed carbon dioxide to fire a small metal pellet at low velocity”.

The USA Today reports that was a “shots fired” call over their radio.  But the only person shot at the school was Gonzales.  I get the impression the students were scared more from being ordered into lockdown than Gonzales since several students reported not even having a clue what was going on.  The police state they made a judgment call to protect the students and staff.

But what was that judgment based on?  Gonzales was a model student.  There were no threats to anyone. There were no hostages. No one was held at gunpoint. There were no injuries to any student, staff member or property (okay, so he slugged a guy for no reason, no reason for deadly force).  Heck, we don’t even know if was loaded! What was the actual threat?  Not the perceived threat but the actual threat.  There was none.  The only “threat” was someone saw “something that looked like a gun”.

Also, from what I heard on the audio tapes of an administrator calling the police she couldn’t stay focused on answering the questions, she kept answering other staff member’s questions.  I got the vibe she did not feel in danger (although calling the police was correct, I’m using her tone here to illustrate my impression of her perceived threat level).

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Why was Gonzales shot?  Zero tolerance policies.  There was no chance for Gonzales to explain.  “Put the gun down or we’ll shoot with deadly force”.   Did the police try to advance and hear Gonzales threaten the police he’ll shoot?  How serious was that threat, if any?  But his life was over the second the pellet gun crossed onto school grounds.  All because of zero tolerance.

Wikipedia defines zero tolerance (in schools) as “a policy of punishing any infraction of a rule, regardless of accidental mistakes, ignorance, or extenuating circumstances.”  In other words, giving the harshest, most severe punishment (typically expulsion) for a violation of the policy without hearing the violator’s explanation. School administration has the right to the roles of judge,  jury, and executioner without due process.

Zero tolerance polices were initially passed by school boards in the wake of a tragedy – the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999.  Laws (and policies) should never be passed when people are too emotional to think clearly.  And once there is a precedent in place – it is nearly impossible to undo it.  It was zero tolerance policies that brought in a SWAT team against a 15 year-old with a pellet gun?  Are they sure deadly force was the only option?

These policies have become so extreme that the National School Safety and Security Services has found that too many zero tolerance policies lack common sense.  “Students need consequences, but they must be appropriate to the context of the situation, the disciplinary and academic history of the student, age appropriateness, and related factors.”

Fear from what could be has allowed schools to push the boundaries between common sense punishment and maximum punishment.  Certain measures such as security cameras, security personnel, and the ability to search and seize are acceptable in protecting everyone.  Other security measures such as metal detectors, school uniforms, and the constant threat of search and seizure are not acceptable.

“Zero tolerance and expulsion don’t have to go hand in hand,” says Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake, Calif. “Zero tolerance simply means all misbehavior will have some sanction. It doesn’t mean you bring the maximum punishment for every transgression.” (link to article)

What has zero tolerance policies done?  Their all-or-nothing approach have created a frenzy in the media, at school board meetings, and in politics that have lead to embarrassment, shame, legal troubles, medical bills, and even death.  Perhaps they’ve saved lives, but that is harder and less accurate to measure.

Examples of severe punishment from a USA Today article:

• In 1999, Lisa Smith, an “eighth-grader who had never known trouble…violated the school’s “zero tolerance” policy by bringing to school a 20-ounce bottle of Cherry 7-Up mixed with a few drops of grain alcohol.”  She made a stupid mistake – one that deserves a suspension, perhaps.  But expulsion and five months at boot-camp?  Her academic career is ruined in the 8th grade by a few DROPS of grain alcohol?  In fact, her punishment by the school is more severe than if she were to have been charged with possession alcohol as a minor in court (fine and a ticket).
• Shanon Coslet , a 10-year-old…was expelled because her mother had put a small knife in her lunchbox to cut an apple. When Shanon realized the knife might violate the school’s zero-tolerance policy, she turned it in to a teacher, who told her she had done the right thing. The child was expelled.”  A student even reported the knife and instead of telling her, “thanks for letting us know, we’ll keep it here in the main office until your mom comes to pick you up and she needs to come in and retrieve it”, they expelled her!
• “Kids have been kicked out of school for possession of Midol, Tylenol, Alka Seltzer, cough drops and Scope mouthwash – contraband that violates zero-tolerance, anti-drug policies. Students have been expelled for Halloween costumes that included paper swords and fake spiked knuckles, as well as for possessing rubber bands, slingshots and toy guns – all violations of anti-weapons policies.” I also heard students being expelled for possession of Ibuprofen.

Another examples:

• In 2010, Mason Jammer, a sixth grader in Ionia, MI, was suspended for shaping his hand like a gun.  Of course the administration says they “warned him he would be suspended” if he continually did so.  Many people praise the school for following through.  Problem is…the kid is SIX.  He’s in kindergarten.  He is not capable of understanding what a “suspension” is or what he is doing is wrong.  The punishment was too severe.

Why does zero tolerance mean the maximum, harshest punishment imaginable?  Why are young children being suspended and expelled, ruining their chances for a good education because of something they barely understand?  Yes, students need to learn they are responsible for their actions, but are a few drops of grain alcohol worth an expulsion and five months at boot camp?  What is zero tolerance really teaching America’s students?

[author's note:  As the Gonzales investigation continues new evidence will come to light and stories will conflict/change.  I am not a news outlet nor was I present at Cummings Middle School.  My source is Welch, William M., and Carolyn Pesce. "Parents say cop shooting of boy unjustified." USATODAY.com. USA Today, 5 Jan. 2012. Web. 5 Jan. 2012. ]

This past semester I completed my first teaching observation; my field placement was in a middle school in a nearby district.  I knew before I even began the master’s program that I only wanted to teach high school English.  My feelings were justified after spending 50 hours with middle school students.  They say it takes a special kind of teacher to teach middle school…and unfortunately, I am not that kind of teacher.  I am thankful for the observation of course; it helped me to realize that teaching middle school will have to be a last resort.

I graded students work quite often, which helped me to understand the mindset of 6-7th graders.  I anticipated the students would not be capable of too much complex analysis, but they would be able to write a decent paragraph.  Boy, was I mistaken!  Only about a quarter of the students could write a full, legible sentence!  This was beyond poor quality work, in my opinion.  Their school is a Blue Ribbon school!  I expected the students would be capable of writing a complete sentence with appropriate capitalization, a subject, and a predicate.  The students have had several years of writing practice and should be able to construct a correct sentence – even if it is only a basic sentence and rephrased from the question.

I knew I would easily lose my patience with this age group and I would not be an effective teacher.  My philosophy of discussion and projects instead of regurgitation will not benefit middle schoolers who have still not learned the basics of writing.  I can expand a person’s thinking and vocabulary as well as refine their grammatical skills, but teaching subjects and verbs?  No thank you.

As I am also eager to utilize new technologies, I was ecstatic to see that every classroom in this middle school has SMART boards.  Of course, it is in a comparatively wealthier neighborhood, but nevertheless, the technology was incredible.  I have known about SMART boards for many years; however, I have never been able to use one as they have not been in my classrooms during my education.  There are many “bells and whistles” on SMART boards that help foster creative and efficient learning, but the feature I am most thrilled with is the ability to write in my own handwriting on the board and it automatically is saved to the computer.  I can save my discussion notes without the necessity of taking pictures of the board or fast scribbles before the next class comes in.  I also love the fact I can use a DocCam to put the homework up on the board or I can use the SMART board and hand-write answers as we discuss them.  The possibilities are endless!  I cannot wait to see the new technologies that will be available in the coming years when I have my own classroom.

Speaking of ideas, I have purchased a black Moleskine notebook that serves as my “little black book” of ideas.  It’s 5×7, so not the tiny size, but not large either.  This is where I am storing my project ideas or discussion questions that I want to use in my classroom.  Some are completely my own invention, others are derived from projects I have done in the past, and a few are projects used either by my tutoring students or the classroom observations (I of course tweaked them to my liking).

I have not received my field placement for the next semester, but I am eager to find out which school I will be visiting.  I hope the field coordinator will place me in a high school.  I have also begun to fill out the paperwork for my student teaching field placement.  I cannot wait to be back in the classroom – teaching that is…not so thrilled to continue to be a student.

Although I enjoy Shakespeare, I often find myself frustrated by his diction.  The plot sounds quite interesting, but when I try to read the text, I feel like chucking the book across the room in utter frustration at the guy.  Can’t he just say what he means to say without flowery language?  The answer is simple – he could have, but he was a poet. And poets love their alliterations, similes, and metaphors.

Shakespeare had a large vocabulary, but it still wasn’t enough to express his thoughts.  In his article “This is Your Brain on Shakespeare“, Daniel Honan writes,

“In all of his plays, sonnets and narrative poems, Shakespeare used 17,677 words. Of these, he invented approximately 1,700, or nearly 10 percent. Shakespeare did this by changing the part of speech of words, adding prefixes and suffixes, connecting words together, borrowing from a foreign language, or by simply inventing them.”

It’s no wonder that students reading Shakespeare can be frustrated – the guy invented words arbitrarily to suit his needs.  Shakespeare wasn’t crazy – no in fact he was actually a genius for inventing words.  The time it takes for the brain to invent the language and for readers to logically figure out meaning leads to a more intelligent brain, according Honan and Davis.

Honan’s article explores scientifically the effect creative language (like Shakespeare’s invented language) has on the brain.  He taps into the research of Philip Davis from the University of Liverpool’s School of English to illustrate the connection between creative language and the brain.

Honan writes:

For Davis, we need creative language “to keep the brain alive.” He points out that so much of our language today, written in bullet points or simple sentences, fall into predictability. “You can often tell what someone is going to say before they finish their sentence” he says. “This represents a gradual deadening of the brain.”

So your high school English teacher was right – learning Shakespeare will be applicable to your future.  The more Shakespeare you know, the strong your brain will be.  And a strong brain leads to more knowledge retention and perhaps, as Davis hopes, to help reduce memory loss in those with dementia.

This was forwarded to me, so sadly, I do not take credit for it, nor do I know who wrote it.  Nevertheless, it is funny to share some examples of homonyms and homographs (words that sound the same but have different meanings that may or may not be spelled different).

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You think English is easy??

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8 ) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. – Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’ ?

I’ve taken the year and 8 months allowed to complete the correspondence course for British Literature from Indiana University.  Sure, I probably could have taken it at Oakland University for cheaper (after all my extensions!) and a shorter semester (4 months opposed to 1 year, 8 months), but the class was a challenge for me with the sheer number of pages to be read.  Yesterday I turned in my last essay, for Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and have scheduled my final exam for this Sunday afternoon.  I am cutting it close on the deadline, but since I can’t turn back the clock, there isn’t much I can do about it.

I believe I could have liked Heart of Darkness if Conrad hadn’t written the entire thing as a monologue, with quotes beginning every paragraph.  The character, Marlow, was narrating a story to a group of friends and on occasion his speeches went off on tangents.  Not to mention the difficulty in trying to quote (in my essay) what another character said!  I had to use so many quotation marks, I easily confused the grammar check in Word (myself included!).  In my opinion, there were details when it wasn’t necessary and no details when there should have been.  And although I had to accept the novel based on the time and place it was written, I did not like seeing the frequency in which the n-word appeared (a racial slur for a person with dark/black/brown skin).

Aside from working on finishing the British Literature class, I have been tutoring 5-6 days a week.  I have 6 students right now; I tutor some up to 6 hours per week while others I tutor as little as 2 hours per week.  5 of the 6 are ESL students and I am enjoying learning and teaching English in a systematic way.  It’s not the way I was brought up or taught in school and it’s fascinating to me to see how many rules and exceptions there are in American English.  Since I’ve systematically learned Spanish, I can understand their frustration.  I don’t speak any of their native languages, however.  Two ESL students speak Korean, one Urdu, and the other Brazilian Portuguese.  Spanish is advantageous with Portuguese as there are many similarities.  I have been considering adding an ESL endorsement to my teaching license – but that is another year long program at Oakland AFTER the MAT program and obtaining my master’s degree.  That’s quite a lot of debt and time in school without earning much money from my degrees.  Perhaps it is something I will revisit in a few years.

The MAT program is going along quite well.  I am enjoying the lectures and the conversations we have in class.  My professor is a principal at a nearby middle school so we actually have someone teaching us who is currently in the field.  I have been placed at Van Hoosen Middle School for my first field placement.  I am enjoying the time with the middle schoolers, but I am positive I want to work with high schoolers.

And the Spanish class I am repeating?  Going along just great.  If only I had this professor a year ago…things would have been much better.  I’m glad it’s not a huge burden and it’ll be done with in December.  I am really looking forward to finishing British Literature and Spanish Literature…then I can go back to reading the fiction that I like (and miss!).

This video was shared with my education theory class last night and it is definitely worth passing along.  The message Mr. Richardson makes is that the current education system is so antiquated – it hasn’t fundamentally changed in 125 years – and schools no longer need to be a place to seek information but to learn how to use the information available online.  He wants people to stop talking about “better” and start talking about “different”.