How are teachers fighting the internet, that great cheating device in the sky?

Across the country, teachers and professors are abandoning the traditional academic chore of tidy margins and meticulous footnotes because the Internet offers a searchable online smorgasbord of ready-made papers.

“Students are using the Internet like an 8-billion-page, cut-and-pastable encyclopedia,” said John Barrie, owner of a company that makes software to detect plagiarism.

So as the academic year wraps up in Southern California and elsewhere, students increasingly are having their knowledge tested with oral exams and in-class writing exercises. Or they’re being asked to demonstrate their knowledge in unconventional ways — say, by assuming the role of a colonial pamphleteer railing against the Stamp Act.

When Lady Ninja was grading papers at an American private school, I was handed them after she’d had a look to type random phrases into Google. You’d be surprised how many kids are cheating. Or maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you’d just be sad. Sad as a unicorn staring at a PCB factory fueled with rainforest, puffins, and baby pandas.