QuillBot got banned at our school, curious how other boards handle paraphrasing tools
our school added quillbot to the blocked sites list on the school network this week, but grammarly is still allowed since its framed as a grammar tool rather than a paraphrasing tool, even though grammarly’s rewrite feature does basically the same thing quillbot does. seems like an inconsistent line to draw honestly. ran both tools side by side on a sample paragraph out of curiosity and grammarly’s rewrite suggestions were arguably more aggressive at changing sentence structure than quillbots basic paraphrase mode. anyone else seeing this kind of inconsistent blocking where one tool gets banned and a functionally similar one stays allowed just because of branding or marketing language.
5 Replies
Join the discussion.
Log In to Reply
tested walter writes ai on the same sample paragraph out of curiosity after reading this. it works. thats the problem, functionally most of these tools blur into each other and the blocking decisions end up arbitrary.
has anyone actually gone to their it department with a side by side comparison like brendan's and asked them to reconsider the list? feels like the kind of thing that could actually change a policy if presented clearly.
@Nicole Bergeron not yet but might be worth trying, i have the comparison already done so it wouldnt take much extra effort to bring it to our it coordinator.
in practice the messiness of real student use matters more than any clean side by side test though, kids find workarounds for blocked sites constantly so the block itself probably isnt doing much beyond a minor speed bump.
seen this exact inconsistency at my school too, i think its mostly because whoever manages the network filter is going off tool names and reputation rather than actually testing what the tools do.