Turnitin recently added the ability to add colored highlights with comments to student papers in GradeMark. Instead of only a plain yellow highlighter, you can now choose from five colors—blue, green, yellow, pink, and purple.

Turnitin users will no longer be able to access old version of GradeMark after July 23, 2012. If you are still using this earlier version, we recommend you switch to the current version of GradeMark as soon as possible.

In response to user requests, Turnitin will be making changes to how students can access the digital receipts for their submissions. We plan to make these changes in August 2012. The following are the changes that will be included in the new digital receipt process:

• The digital receipt will be downloadable as a PDF from the student's class homepage and from the document viewer—instructors will also be able to download this PDF digital receipt from the document viewer.
• The new PDF version of the digital receipt will include the submission date and time.
• The digital receipt that appears on the screen after the student has successfully submitted a paper will now include a message explaining how students can access this PDF version of the digital receipt for download and printing.
• The email digital receipt that is sent to students will no longer include text from the submitted paper - the emailed receipt will contain a confirmation message and directions for how to access the new PDF digital receipt.

The folks over at EasyBib, a citation help site, recently created a new infographic on information literacy. This infographic builds on research from Turnitin's Infographic and White Paper on the top sites students are turning to on the web, and adds EasyBib's citation data and student survey to offer further insight into student research habits as well as the critical role that librarians play in developing 21st century informational literacy skills.

Watch this panel discussion on collaboration between social media and education. This forum was presented by the Brookings Institute's Center for Technology Innovation. This panel of experts address the challenges of using new technology and policies behind integrating technology into the education system.

Since 2011's Earth Day, around 65 million student writing assignments were submitted to Turnitin. If all these papers were submitted, graded online with GradeMark, and returned to students ... all without printing, together we could've saved nearly 40,000 trees!

Alright, well let's do some math:

65 Million student writing assignments submitted to Turnitin ...

With an average length of 5.2 pages per assignment ...

That's 338 Billion pages ...

With an average of 8,333 sheets of paper in a tree (Conservatree) ...

Saves the world 40,562 trees ... if we went paperless!

In an age of online paper mills spitting out weak, sickly puppies of papers and destroying the integrity of college composition, I find myself becoming an anti-Cruella De Vil out to eliminate any use of such atrocities, checking and re-checking students’ papers to make sure no Dalmatian spots of plagiarism are found.

These internet services offer essays, term papers, research papers and the like to students of all ages and subjects. The more "reputable” of these sites prefer to charge a fee for their services, but free sites also exist for the less-fortunate (but no less-lazy) students. Don’t be fooled into thinking only freshman composition professors need worry about such sites. These mills prey on all matter of students. If a student must write anything in your class—from journal entries to theses—you, too, are in danger of receiving regurgitated ideas from the outer limits of cyber space. All manner of poorly-written essays on subjects from the Iliad to Iconography to Israel are left to be picked up and cuddled by students who like the looks of such a cheap and innocent-looking "puppy” in the cardboard box on the sidewalk.

"Turnitin.com has no doubt made me a better teacher. Something that would've taken me a hundred hours now takes me twenty hours over the course of a two-week period. And the kids get it [...] so they tend to be more receptive to the GradeMark than they are to my own handwritten comments.”

Turnitin's improved Administrator Training Center will guide Administrators, trainers and key personnel through Turnitin's L.E.A.R.N. process for getting you and your faculty prepared and excited to use Turnitin. You'll also find presentations, templates, and tools to support you in this endeavor.

Whether your school is new to Turnitin, or you've been with us for years, L.E.A.R.N.'s five step process should be revisited at least every year.

Not an administrator? Visit Instructor Training for helpful tutorials and videos.

NBC News recently spoke to Dominican University about Turnitin for Admissions, a service that detects matched content specifically in applicant essays. With a limited number of spots available in various college programs, Turnitin for Admissions will help them identify those who truly deserve to be there.

View this video at: http://nbcbayarea.com.

Learn more about Turnitin for Admissions »