TIE 542
Evidence Based Posting #4 – Internet and Rise of Plagiarism
This past Friday I had lunch with several colleagues and one was complaining about a student who decided to plagiarize her final paper in her class. This made me start thinking about my own students and how often plagiarism occurs. I have already caught three students this year alone plagiarizing from the Internet. Because the Internet is so easily accessible these students are able to just copy and paste in a matter of minutes. I try to look closely and guess which students may have plagiarized and then put the phrase into a search engine but unfortunately it doesn’t work all of the time. Plus I don’t have the time to enter phrases into search engines for each of my students. In addition to all of this the Internet is both a public and private source, so how does a teacher know what to be looking for as actual plagiarism versus a web-site allowing the user to use their information? Sometimes I feel that keeping up with all of the new sites out there makes it a much more difficult and time-consuming task for us educators. Another aspect of all of this is that I am more skeptical of all of my students because of the rise of plagiarism today. I don’t like thinking the worst of my students all the time. Brian Greggs from Roosevelt High School makes me feel very uneasy when he said, “I wouldn’t say it’s rampant, but everyone’s done it.” How can we educate our students with the difference between right and wrong? Is there a way to combat all of this, besides purchasing the plagiarism software?
Thompson, Lynn. "Educators Blame Internet for Rise in Student Cheating." Seattle Times 16 June 2005. 2 June 2007
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