Reflection on Plagiarism

  Plagiarism is a huge problem growing as technology grows. With knowledge accessible at the click of a mouse on the vast web, more and more authors fall victim to someone who uses their works without the proper citation. If students look hard enough, they may even be able to find websites that sells completed essays. What are teachers to do?

  Breaking ethics, which isn't the goal of the majority of students, is done when the student doesn't know how to correctly cite the sources or when the student ran out of time to correctly write their own works. The American Psychological Association (APA) manual is an excellent source to help avoid plagiarism. Another resource that helps out greatly is www.citationmachine.net. This website will correctly cite your resources for you in most popular formats (MLA, APA, and others). All you have to do is enter the information you have about your source, and it will put it into proper format. You then copy and paste the format into your paper. Nice!

  Another tool both students and teachers can use is www.turnitin.com. This is a website where you can submit your paper and it will check vast databases to see how much of the paper is plagiarized. This helps the teacher by reducing his or her time checking papers and their authenticity. It helps students to understand what public domain is and what is considered someone else's works.

 
   This directly supports the NETS-T standard of "Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility". It helps teachers support:

      a. Advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources. 

      c. Promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions related to the use of technology and information.

:)