Sick of kids using Yahoo Answers to do their homework for them...?

I am an elementary school teacher. I think students using Yahoo Answers should be asking HOW to answer the questions so they can do them by themselves in the future. I agree that, rather than trying to learn how to find the answers themselves, most of them are just looking for "free answers" and that is not going to help them learn anything. It may interest you to know that I have noticed that many of the answers given on Yahoo! homework help are WRONG!!

In addition, it wouldn't help raise their grade in my class even if they got every one of their homework answers from Yahoo! and they were all correct. Homework is a really small percentage of my grades. Most of the grading comes from work done in class. I think my students would benefit from doing the practice homework themselves or I wouldn't assign it. If my students choose to get the answers elsewhere (such as on Yahoo Answers) they really aren't raising their grade, they are just cheating themselves out of the opportunity to practice before the graded classwork which is how I really evaluate them.

Diapek - Not everyone understands the information at the same time. Some students may understand how to do the problems and others may not. I do my best to reach everyone, but with the number of students I have each day there is no way that I can give them each individual attention on every topic presented. Some students do need extra help after school to understand the homework. Just being realistic.

Well, if the goal of homework is to reinforce school work, then the child should have already learned the information at school and would not need help answering the question.

If the goal of the teacher is to get out of having to teach in the school and make the kid self teach at home, then the child needs to be able to use whatever resource is available to them.

Would you have a problem with them looking up the information in an encyclopedia? Or their school books? Both would be places where a bunch of people got together just to answer homework type questions....

Here however you do have the challenge that not everyone who answers has the right answer. The common answer might be the wrong answer, for instance : 3+3+3*9+1 does not equal 82, though many people will answer that it does.

I completely agree. Sometimes kids don't do there homework, or don't want to, so they post ALL their homework questions on YA and everyone doing them for them.

It's wrong, because lots of kids don't learn anything, and end up failing the quizzes and tests. They don't learn anything.

And some people think they are actually helping the student out by giving them the answers, but the students are just using them.

However, my friend posts up chemistry questions all the time, but only after she googles it and goes through the book several times trying to find it. And when she posts the question, she gets answers, but also very very rude comments about how lazy she is for not doing their own work.

I think that they should be doing their own work, and if they don't and still post their questions on YA, then you should just ignore the question. It's against YA's rules to comment telling them to do their own work, and you can get reported for that. So next time, just ignore them. Don't help. It's what I always do if I suspect that they are just using YA to get out of looking up their own work.

Yep, I'm ticked about it too. If I was a teacher I would have a profile here and scout for potential cheaters. I'd go through and look to see if they were asking about the same assignment and then give a bogus answer. Then I'd wait until class the following day and if someone put the bogus answers for everything they'd be busted. It's ridiculous. I'm 16 and a junior in high school and I'm taking all honors and AP classes, yet I manage to keep a 3.95 GPA. Just last night I saw someone who was supposedly a senior in high school and needed help finding X in the equation 2X=6.

What I find so unreal is that if they entered the same question into google or some other search engine they would get the correct information while actually learning the subject instead of using some one elses brain to simple give and answer. How can you answer your school questions without understanding the background to the answer. I'm no rocket scientist but even I can see that its no different to looking at someone elses test sheet and copying the answer.

I agree, and that's good to hear that maybe I'm not that old after all yet if a 19-year-old agrees with me. :) I'm 26, and you start to wonder at this age. . . .

If I even try to answer those kinds of questions at all, I'll just try leading people to where I think they should try to go. My budding inner professor (not for sure yet, still a Ph.D. student) won't let me go any farther than that. Usually, someone's already beaten me to the exact answer anyhow. I'm pretty much limited to the high-level, college discipline-specific kind that most of those who we're complaining about don't know how to help with, but I'd love to be able to just *help* elsewhere.

Lighten up a little. You're taking this TOO serious. Yahoo answers helps those who ask...regardless of question.

Final note: You don't 'have' to answer any questions if you feel you shouldn't.

Before you get angry with this answer let me say that I totally AGREE with you. I have posted a question here about my son's homework myself. BECAUSE "I" didn't understand it and this is a very quick way to find out. Yes I could've called the 'homework helpline' and found out...however technology has come a long way and the internet plays a huge part of that.

Relax...it's all ok.

Totally agree with you! If i need help I wouldn't ask people i don't know who might have the wrong answer I would call a friend or ask parent/sibling!

I use yahoo answers to get help with my homework, and I'm in college. The homework isn't collected so it doesn't help my grade at all, it just helps me work backwards to figure out what I did wrong.

i agree ... plagiarism is plagiarism, whether it's from a book, from your friend's paper, or from some random stranger on the internet. it's sad to me that kids aren't learning that integrity and learning are more important than the answer to question #3.

giving help with concepts is one thing ("how do you convert a decimal to a fraction?"). it's great if kids can use this as a resource for that. doing someone's work for them ("what decimal is 3/4") is unethical and actually doing the kid a disservice.