21 minutes ago
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Plagiarism
I discussed this quiz with my eighth graders today. Many of them saw no problem with the scenario of buying an essay - after all, if you bought it, it's yours, so that's not stealing. They also frequently used arguments which included some permutation of "everybody's doing it" or "if the technology makes it possible, what on earth is wrong with it?" Interesting discussion, anyway, though perhaps they weren't really convinced by my point of view.
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7 comments:
Interesting how technology comes to the aid of fuzzy ethics.
Did you yell harshly, and glare at them? Perhaps THAT would come to the aid of unfuzzy ethics. (-:
I thought number 6 was kind of iffy. I guess it depends on exactly what they mean by "You change a couple of words, so that it’s different than the original."
Taken literally, I can see how they consider it plagiarism. However, I read it to mean rephrasing the idea using your own words, then citing the source, which would be an appropriate use of literature.
OK, I'll try yelling and screaming. :-)
Amy, it has to be more than "a couple of words." :-)
That is interestingly related to what's going on in the Presidential competition right now...did he or didn't he plagiarize? I'm guessing we need to get some teachers to weigh in on it, instead of just the TV pundits!
I thought this post at The Thinklings was interesting on the plagiarism question with Obama: http://thinklings.org/?post_id=4421
I like the idea of having some teachers weigh in on it! :-)
RE: "a couple of words"
I just wrote a whole comment and Blogger ate it. grrrr ...
Ruth, I guess the exact definition of the "couple of words" is what I'm suggesting is confusing. A briefly stated idea (say, 6-10 words) where you've changed half the words and maybe rearranged the order would qualify in my mind as both changing "a couple of words" and not being plagiarism.
Or else I probably plagiarized quite few of my research papers in college.
I love this, but I have a problem with question 3. Using an image without citation is copyright infringement. I bristle at seeing it called plagiarism.
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