During my student teaching, I taught 9th grade earth science, the literal “dumping grounds” for students in this particular high school. If they didn’t have a spot for or know what to do with a student, it was “Welcome to earth science with Miss Hutchins." On one specific assignment about the rock cycle, a paper that was typed, double spaced and in purple italic font was turned in to me. After reading about half way through the first paragraph, I noticed a semicolon that was properly used, which left me asking myself, “Is this truly this student’s work?” Being the new teacher that I was, I had to figure out a way to prove the literary crime of this student. I simply retyped the entire paragraph into the Google search box and, BINGO! I printed out the page, highlighted the two identical parts of the papers and presented it to the student. His reply, “But Miss Hutchins, I actually retyped it and change the font and color.”
So with the story above in mind, when given the chance to actually partake in a plagiarism assignment, I was excited. Could I do a better job than my before mentioned student? I typed up, or should I say, copy and pasted sentence after sentence until about 90% of the essay for the assignment was plagiarized. However, with the task to copy 90% but fool a matching software and score less than the used 90% of words, the task was tricky than I previously thought. As I typed I started rephrasing and changing out words for synonyms, even ones that didn’t seem so “fancy.” Once submitted, I anxiously awaited my matching score. Bing! It came back. 60% matching? Really, I was prepared to redo the whole paper, maybe even switch topics to make it easier. I really didn’t do that much to make it my own work. So while, you may have students that don’t even take the time to cheat carefully, like my former student, a student who takes the time for few “switcharoos” and synonyms, he or she might actually fool a high school or middle school teacher that doesn’t have the nifty matching software or the time to retype every sentence in every paper into the Google search box.
With the easiness of plagiarism demonstrated to me first hand from my assignment, the need to teach students about academic integrity seems more important to me than ever before. With the digital age zooming past us as we speak, the access to limitless information is everywhere; cell phones, iPods, iPad, oh, and don’t forget a plain old regular computer. It makes me laugh now, but at the time that my former student replied so earnestly about his innocence in his plagiarism crime, I thought it unbelievable that he really thought that way. I guess I have become “immune” to the idea that students cheat, and most that do (well in middle school) may not even realize it’s not the right way to do things. This access to boundless amounts of information and how copying information is starting to become accepted and understood is mentioned in a recent New York Time article, “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in the Digital Age.” Author, Trip Gaberil, writes, “The Internet may also be redefining how students — who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking — understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.” It makes me wonder, “Will this lack of understanding of integrity in academics and work ethic eventually poison other parts of our society as well?”
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| Picture taken from Microsoft Clip Art |
Works Cited
Gabriel, T. (2010, August 10). Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in the Digital Age. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html?_r=2
