Leaping From The Box

My husband sent this little email quiz to me yesterday. It has been circulating the Internet for quite some time, but it is still intriguing.

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it

I was able to read this quickly and easily, stumbling over only the word strange in the headline. How did you do?

I did a quick Internet search this morning in an attempt to discover if the information was accurate and who the author might be.  Unfortunately, I was unable to find the original author, if there is one. If anyone knows it, please leave a comment so I can give proper credit.

What I did discover, though, was that this did not originate from research done at Cambridge University. Matt Davis, a scientist who works at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, has a long webpage devoted to this ever-circulating email. Davis attempts to explain which statements in the above paragraph are true and which are incorrect. It was interesting reading, if you’ve got an extra few minutes.

I also found The Jumbler. Type in your own text, jumble it and see if you can still read what comes up.

Can you read this?

I sltil fnid ecah day too srhot for all the tthguhos I wnat to tnhik, all the wklas I wnat to tkae, all the bkoos I wnat to raed and all the ferdins I wnat to see. ~ Jhon Bhguruors

Names, obviously, are not so easy to read. Longer words are more difficult too.

Here’s the original, one of my favorite quotes:

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see. ~ John Burroughs

Does this little exercise tell us that correct spelling is not important? Or does it tell us anything? What do you think?

I was tagged by Sandra to list seven interesting things about me. Since I was tagged here at my LeapingFromTheBox blog, I will try to keep the seven items related in some way to learning/education. And maybe I will go the more personal route on my Musings, Mischief and Mayhem blog later.

1. I started out at college studying to be a history teacher, but quickly decided that teaching was not for me. Isn’t it ironic that I become a homeschooling parent?

2. I don’t really enjoy website building, html coding. I find the whole technical aspect of it extremely stressful. Yet I enjoy writing about our experiences, reviewing resources and sharing that information on the web. And I love tinkering with the layouts, finding what is visually pleasing, as you can tell from the fact that the theme of this blog just changed again!

3. I love the hunt of finding new resources, which has been both a blessing and a curse in our homeschooling journey. A blessing because I often stumble onto things that either my own family can use or that turns out to be useful for a fellow homeschooler. A curse because I can easily go overboard, overwhelming everyone with the options I find and stressing the budget with the choices I purchase.

4. I began the LeapingFromTheBox.com website because I was continually answering emails about homeschooling. I thought if I put my knowledge and information online, then people wouldn’t send me emails. Of course, they still send me emails, but at least now I can usually just redirect them to the appropriate pages on my site for answers.

5. Homeschooling math has always been a challenge for me. It is a subject that I always feel is just slightly out of my grasp, like grabbing a fistful of Jello. Just when you feel you have a handle on it, it goes squishing away again. I would like to know more about it, it fascinates me, yet I am not sure I really have the brain for it. It may be one of those subjects that I will always regret not understanding more.

6. I never even tried homeschooling science. Over the years I provided a lot of resources, we gardened, grew plants indoors, had pets, watched NOVA and read a lot of science books, but I never tried to teach science. I let my middle child make any scientific explanations that were needed, as his level of science comprehension exceeded mine at about age three. I know science information by rote, from what I learned in school, but I will never understand it at any level.

7. I will consider myself an unschooler even when I no longer have children being homeschooled. Once an unschooler, always an unschooler.

I am supposed to tag seven people, but I guess I will just let you tag yourself. If you blog this meme after reading it here, please leave me a comment with a link!

… even in the homeschooling world

Recently plagiarism has had the literary world abuzz. The Writer Unboxed has several posts concerning the plagiarism scandal of a well-known romance author. Plagiarism is alive and well. Even in the homeschooling world.

Deborah Markus, author and publisher of Secular Homeschooling Magazine, wrote The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List. So many of us identified with Deborah’s wish list and the URL to her site was a very popular forward on the homeschool email lists last fall. Obviously, it was so popular that another homeschooling family decided to post it on their website as if were their own, without asking Deborah’s permission. And when Deborah contacted them about it, they essentially told her to go pound salt, as it was one of their bigger moneymaking articles. Deborah wrote about this on her blog post I’d Rather Be Hated Than Used.

They do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but flattery does not give anyone the right to publish someone else’s material on their website and reap financial rewards for doing so. The fact that it is another homeschooling family doing so makes the stab doubly painful.

I have articles on many websites other than my own and was pleased to give permission for my writings to appear on those sites, always with the condition that there is a link back to my LeapingFromTheBox website. I was pleased, though, because the site owner asked in advance! And if I had said no, I assume they would not have posted up the article.

Plagiarism is very difficult to fight, even with copyright laws. She might have a legal case in that the offenders are making money from her material. She should definitely contact the offender’s hosting company and complain there.

Is there a way to turn Deborah’s experience into an ultimately positive one? Even though I have not subscribed to a homeschooling magazine in several years, I just subscribed to the Secular Homeschooling Magazine for one year. And I definitely now have her blog on my daily reading list. My positive action for the day!