Having computers and Internet access in school allows students
to do research easily for essays, presentations, and projects.
However, the Internet also makes it easy for kids to cheat - and
makes it seem as if answers are obtained with the click of a
mouse.
One of the problems is that having access to the Internet and
encyclopedias online can help students cheat when writing essays
and presentations. With sites that give students full access to
term papers and other essays on hundreds of topics, a student only
needs to copy and paste portions of that essay into his or hers to
have a complete paper. Students didn't expect teachers (many of
whom were not computer savvy) to go through books in the library
and search the Internet for "borrowed phrases" - ones not cited
with a source.
And for a while, the teachers didn't.
However, teachers are becoming more and more aware of what is
happening on the Internet and around them. Many schools now send
all of their essays through systems that compare them with
thousands of others listed in a database to determine if any
phrases were copied and not cited. The Internet, which had helped
the students cheat, is now helping teachers determine who cheated
and how. Sites like
TurnItIn.com, which compares a paper to a database of other
papers, help determine if the student has cheated.
The Internet also makes it too easy to plagiarize phrases and
ideas from websites. Students often don't realize they are doing
this. People get bombarded with millions of messages and phrases
every day. A student might write down a phrase and then ask, "Are
those my own thoughts, or did I see it somewhere the other day?"
Not everything is easy to remember, and for students who often do 3
to 5 things at a time (check email, chat with friends online, look
up the news online, and watch TV), it's even more difficult.
Sometimes it's impossible to completely cite a source. Links may
work one day and not the next. When the teacher goes to the site
and doesn't find the specified article, that can be a mark against
your grade. Other times, a site may have an article with no title
by an unknown author and with an unknown creation date. This leaves
you with nothing more than a Web address to cite the article with -
something that some teachers don't like.
The other problem I notice is that kids are looking toward the
computer as the "automatic answer machine." Instead of looking at
it as a tool that might possibly give them access to a bit of
information, they assume that it will give them the answer
outright, allowing them to simply copy and paste information and be
done with the paper. So when it comes time to research for a paper,
the computers in the library are the first things to fill up - with
people combing Google, Teoma, Excite, and other search engines in
hopes that one link will show up that will pretty much write their
paper for them.
Fortunately, we have these things called books. These books are
useful little creations, often coming complete with a hard cover to
protect the pages inside - these pages probably contain some of the
information that these computer crazy kids are trying to find. Yes,
it takes a little more work to look through the index of a book and
find the correct page, and it's not as fun as clicking colorful
little icons on a computer screen, but it may produce more
satisfactory results than the computer.
I can hardly believe I said that, because a year ago I would
have gone along with all the other kids in hopes of finding my
information already compiled and ready to use. However, I now know
that this is not practical, and while the computer is an excellent
tool for finding information, I still find that nothing beats good
old fashioned book.
For those of you trying to find information on the Internet for
a project or some sites to recommend to students, there are two
that I find very useful. One is called RefDesk. It contains
little bits of useful and not-so-useful information for you to look
through. You can get instant access to dictionaries, encyclopedias,
and links to hundreds of other websites in many different
categories.
The other site I like to use is from Apple, the Apple Learning
Interchange. It contains links with information gathered from
other schools, teachers, and often has some interesting feature
stories.
Check them out, but please remember: When looking for
information on the Internet, don't think that the computer will
give you all of the answers, and please cite your sources
properly.
With that said, some of the information on plagiarism in schools
was obtained from All Things Considered, an NPR program.
Local broadcast times can be obtained online.
