New technologies have opened up a whole new world that can be used for "good or evil." Students and educators need to be educated about just what plagarism is and what constitutes software piracy.
The article, "The New Plagarism" makes some interesting points. First, many of the research projects/reports that were done in the past are irrelavant today and will likely encourage students to cheat. Jamie McKenzie proposes that we change the questions that students are being asked to answer to encourage thought and critical thinking. Jamie calls these "essential questions." We must also teach them how to cite materials and ideas from other sources.
Bob Krueger encourages us as adults to be good role models for students and to talk to them about cyber-ehtics. He states that educators need to take the lead in the discussions about Cyber-ethics because many children have more knowledge and skill with the web than thier parents.
Both articles challenge us to look at our own practices and the practices of our staff to ensure that we are being good role models. We need to help students understand what the legal and ethical requirements of using the web are and how they should be observed.
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5 comments:
Hi!
This is one of the hardest things I've found in working with teachers...getting them to move away from the straight-forward reports to something involving higher-level thinking skills. So many grew up doing reports on George Washington and the Civil War it's hard to get them out of that mentality (i.e. in third grade we do reports on the Civil War). It requires a different thought process, or at least a change in perspective, which is difficult when the students and the schools are evaluated on discrete facts in a standardized test.
Adam
I believe that many of our students does a lot of plagarism, because they honestly do not know how to summarize. Then their are other students that just don't want to put in the work to summarize. As teachers, we need to do lessons on how to summarize before releasing them onto the web. I start with using books and then the web. Yes!!! I agree, we as teachers have to set the example of what all this really means.
I can see the problem with plagiarism with researching on-line, particularly because parents are not knowledgable in what is copyrighted or credible. Because of this factor, I am going to be conducting an informational session with my students' parents during our open house so that they realize not only the relevance of us using technology in the English classroom, but what the expectations are and the problems and issues related to plagiarism.
Part of the problem with plagiarism is that not only do we live in an electronic world that makes it easy to plagiarize, many students AND adults are unsure of "the rules." One thing we can do to support our students and/or teachers is to teach them the do's and don't of using materials on the web. Also, if we provide examples for them to reference in the future when they are doing research, that may help increase the chance that they do the right thing. From my personal perspective, it is helpful for me to keep my APA resources with me when I am writing so I can be sure to cite work appropriately. Access to sources that provide handy reminders for students could increase the likelihood that they will cite their work.
Hi!
I like Amy's idea of addressing this at an open house with parents. This not only educates the parents but sends the message that this is important and that students will be expected to use the Internet in an ethical manner.
I've also gotten curious...if we emphasize this enough in class can we get students to be the examples for their parents?
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