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Plagiarism: Not Quite As Simple As It Seems

Published by Stacy on December 11, 2007 in Learning. 41 Comments

My friends and I were discussing plagiarism with one of my favorite teachers the other day when he told us a story from when he was in college. One of his friends had gotten a permanent mark on her record because she accidentally plagiarized in one of her papers. She hadn’t cited or paraphrased a government act properly because she assumed that it fell under common knowledge. Unfortunately for her, her school had a strict plagiarism policy and that small mistake almost got her expelled.

The unspoken moral of that story, of course, was that it’s better to cite everything—just to be safe. Because something like that might happen to you someday. This got me thinking about how easily that could have been me.

While I don’t think teachers in high school are quite as stringent when it comes to plagiarism, I’ve heard more than my fair share of plagiarism stories. Some of them are hilarious in a “you’ve got to be kidding me” sense because it’s hard to believe there are students out there who will pay $24.95 for a poorly written term paper. Or that someone would simply print off a Wikipedia article and scribble their name on the back. One of my friends, a 7th grade English teacher, dryly recalled an incident when three students in one class printed off some of Shakespeare’s sonnets and tried to pass them off as their own. There are many forms of plagiarism; different layers that might not be as simple as “copy and paste, try to pass it off as own work”.

Yet when I hear the word “plagiarism”, I think of kids who copy someone else’s paper word-for-word despite knowing better. One of the reasons why I think plagiarism is so rampant is because it’s hard to define.

There’s really no concrete definition because it can be very subjective. Some teachers/professors are lenient when their students turn in papers that discuss ideas and themes other people have mentioned because many people may have similar interpretations. Likewise, there are only so many different ways anyone can summarize a book. Would that count as plagiarism?

Point blank: when do we cite and when do we not?

Even though teachers have lectured about the evils of plagiarism since 5th grade, I sometimes still find myself staring at the computer screen, unsure on whether I can copy my AP Environmental Science textbook’s definition of biodiversity or if I needed to paraphrase. Do I even know how to paraphrase that term when the textbook’s definition seems to leave no room for a more direct explanation? Teachers always tell students to reword things they write, but what if the student can’t think of another way to reword what they want to say? In this incidence, sheer laziness isn’t the factor behind it.

It’s the ambiguity of plagiarism that worries me. While I can understand if another student and I both turned in a paper with suspiciously similar wording, what if we both turned in papers with a similar thesis or we discussed the same themes/ideas?

The concept of having to cite themes and ideas (how do you know who to cite?) has always made me uneasy. Maybe it’s because throughout my high school career, none of my teachers have seemed to enforce it. If that’s the case, I wonder if I’m going to be in for a nasty shock when I’m in college. I have the unfortunate habit of picking up random phrases or ideas without noticing. So I’m really not the person who came up with that brilliant elephant analogy even though I thought I was.

Accidental or unconscious plagiarism aside, deliberate plagiarism is something I can’t excuse. Plagiarism is becoming more common now because the internet makes it easy for students to get a hold of written papers online. However, I’d like to think that most students (or at least the ones my age or older) would know that technology works both ways. Teachers now have plagiarism detection software and they can Google with the best of us. I’d like to think that they also know that FreeEssays.com is charging them a ridiculous amount of money for a “C” paper. And if they’re honestly trying to fool their teacher, reformatting their $24.95 essay might be a good idea—nothing tips off an educator quite as much as an unformatted paper that still contains hyperlinks, ads, and the name of the site from where she or he purchased it.

Now a truly ironic factor would be if I accidentally plagiarized within this very post. I’ve been careful not to Google or read any articles on plagiarism just in case so all of this is simply me going by what I know, but you can never guess. They say each writer has their very own unique voice and word choice, but maybe I have a writing doppelganger somewhere in the cybersphere.

To all you educators—do you have any funny or memorable plagiarism stories? I’d love to hear them.

Lastly, I’d like to thank Diane Cordell for recommending me for Students 2.0 as well as introducing me to the world of edublogging. She is one of our biggest supporters and her endless encouragement and belief in all of us has been incredible.

Global Villages

Published by Arthus Erea on December 11, 2007 in Leading, and Learning. 32 Comments

In The Sun

I live in two small towns. One, in rural Vermont, fits the classic definition of a small town: a quaint town hall and white church. Even more importantly: the community is closely knit. Whenever any interesting event happens, everybody knows about it within 24 hours. News spreads like wildfire; and our town town paper only comes out every month. We do not rely upon formal systems to spread the news. Instead, every person leverages their social network (the analog kind) to spread the news. Some people have immense networks (mayoral candidates) while others might only share the news with a couple of people. Regardless of how they learn it, within a week everyone knows about Mary’s new son.

I also live in another kind of small town. In this town, I control who attains citizenship. I am able to sculpt this village (network) to my exact tastes; creating a village with only those who interest me. This is a crucial aspect of our new networks—it is constantly engaging. How often have you been in a room filled with people but felt completely alone? This does not happen in our personal networks built online. Whether you agree with those in your learning network or not, they are always a source of a good conversation. Consequently, everyone in the network grows closer and closer into a tightly knit community.

Online Communities MapWhile many attempts have been made to map the internet before, too many of them focus upon the what and the how rather than the who. One of my favorite maps of the internet shows each tool as a country. I believe this is fundamentally wrong, because we build our network around the people, not the place. It doesn’t take a plane ticket to get from Myspace to Facebook—it takes a couple of steps. Usually, most of your network will walk right along with you. Thus, it really just becomes a matter of walking down the streets with your friends with your network. Together, you form a small village, with location based upon similarities in interests, not on geography (both physical and virtual).

Street Map

Just like in a real village, the news in our virtual (social) villages spreads like wildfire. From person to person, the news is passed. Never have I seen a more perfect example of this than with Students 2.0. In our first day alone, we got over 2,500 visits to our splash page. A significant portion of these visits can be attributed to the power of Twitter and our personal learning network. When we first launched the splash page, I watched as the tweets flew by—the village truly came through for us. The gossip certainly triggered an amazing reaction, which ended up growing exponentially.

After the original buzz on Twitter, the local (to our social village) news media came in. In our social village, this is the blogosphere. Seeing the amount of gossip and buzz happening, the local news media believes it merits a story. Of course, once one newspaper picks up the story, the rest follow. Shortly, over 100 stories were written about Students 2.0: bringing in even more gossip and conversation; the self generated P.R. cycle continues. Of course, then it is time to pull in a camera crew to produce a video.

Seeing the success of the video, even more people talked about Students 2.0 and learned about the project. Continually, the vibrations resonate through the village. A town bell has been rung, and everyone congregates on the town green, eager to hear the news.

The launch of Students 2.0 has been a great example of how powerful our social villages can be. I myself have learned a lot about myself, marketing, and the world through the participation in this project and the dialogue with my social village.

Going back to my real world village, I bemoan the location of my high school; it is outside of the village. While both are dependent upon each other, the school is not a part of the village. Consequently, all of the conversations happening within the village rarely infiltrate the thick walls of school. However, as I have seen with Students 2.0, our social villages can add immense value—both professionally and personally. By not utilizing this network, schools become stagnant; news flows slowly and change moves at a snails pace.

A critical step forward for schools would be to embrace the social villages of students and faculty alike. Schools should be developing portals and websites which take into account the social aspects of our lives. Even more importantly, once those networks are developed, the users should have the ability to welcome others into their village; too often we see systems which further isolate the school community from the larger social community.

This doesn’t need to be a radical step. Rather, a control system can and should be adopted—just as we selectively chose the citizens in our social villages (Twitter). Regardless of how this change is accomplished, it must come about; if schools continue to be separate from our social villages, our villages will continue to evolve exponentially while schools will stay rooted in the past.

The social villages we build around us—spanning various mediums—extend our mind and offer immense power which schools would do well to integrate rather than ignore.

The Future of Student Bloggers

Published by Sean "The Bass Player" on December 11, 2007 in Learning. 18 Comments

TypingWhat happens when we student bloggers aren’t students anymore? A question that suddenly popped into my head a couple of weeks back, and it’s been niggling away at me ever since. I mean, what happens when the small amount of students who write blogs, with their own individual views on education, aren’t in school anymore? When they aren’t in the loop, when they have moved on to college or university or are just members of the general public? When they have no real connection to the matter at hand anymore?

The easiest way to answer it is the blunt way: If we don’t get successors then nothing will happen, the student opinion will be gone from the loop completely. Which would be a very sad outcome, seeing the pre-launch reaction to this blog. Most of the students on this blog will continue posting after leaving school, just as I will, but that’s not quite the same. We will be posting from a different perspective, we will have moved on, to college, or university, and some of us might just take the leap straight into the big, bad world. Seeing this new point of view does definitely have its advantages, but the opinions from inside the school walls, the opinions from those 20 or so teenagers in the classroom will always be the most important in my eyes.

So how do we get these successors? Well, it’s something I think this blog can really help with, I hope that the next generation of students can be shown what is possible, through their teachers, and be inspired to take it to the next level. This blog is, for me, a tool for both educators and students. Educators can come and hear what the silent majority actually thinks, and hopefully they will take those thoughts and find a way to incorporate some of what we talk about/suggest into their own teaching.

After all, that is how I came to be here. I was introduced to the use of web 2.0 in the classroom by my old English teacher Mr W. I realized how much it really can impact learning, and so I began my blogging quest! As for students, this is a tool that they can use to interact with educators, to see that the student opinion counts for something, and to provide a place where they are treated as an equal.

But what happens to us? the student authors bringing you this blog. Well, that’s not really up to us. It all depends on our readers and the value you give our views when we grow up, go to college, and (eventually) stop sponging off our parents and get jobs. At the end of the day, this will change our perspectives and almost certainly our views. The educators will always be here, as educators blogging about education, but the students won’t. We may still blog, we may even still blog about education, but we will be college students, musicians or businessmen/women blogging about education. I suppose the point I’m trying to get at is this: will this perspective matter to the edublogosphere?

Personally, the only time I can think of our future opinions being directly applicable is when we become parents. But does this mean our opinions will cease to count from after high school until we have children? I’d hope not, because education is universal. Everyone is constantly learning and has opinions on education, even those who have no connection to a school building. I suppose I can can relate it back to a T.V. advert that was running a few months back in the U.K. saying “if you don’t do politics, you don’t do much.” In a lot of ways if you don’t do education you don’t do much. The world is all about constantly learning something new and passing on your own knowledge to others, a school is just an institution that brings order to the process. Basically, all views on education should have some degree of importance, even if some have a greater value. It just depends who you believe is worth listening to.

As for us, it’s up to you, our readers. Do you carry on listening, and taking notice regardless of our position in society or do you move on and put full faith in the next generation?

Your call.

The Bass Player.

  1. Photo by Misterteacher on Flickr

Student Technology Leadership: Collaborative Learning

Published by Anthony Chivetta on December 10, 2007 in Learning. 13 Comments

If students or teachers fear an inability to support technology used in classrooms this can become a major hindrance to adoption of technology in teaching and learning. Tech-savvy students, however, can help alleviate these fears.

This is the first of a series of posts about my school’s Student Technology Group, also known as StuTech. The idea for the group came from a meeting in March of 2006 during the ISACS accreditation process with the hope of taking advantage of student resources we had available. StuTech currently provides support for over 300 student laptops on campus (students may bring any computer they choose and no staff support is provided) and works closely with teachers to support their use of curricular technology and tech-intensive projects.

Continue reading ‘Student Technology Leadership: Collaborative Learning’

Student Servants

Published by Lindsea on December 10, 2007 in Leading, and Learning. 21 Comments

There aren’t any classes in philanthropy.

You can see examples, but it’s not something that you can learn out of a textbook, or teach in the traditional way. For me, philanthropy was an area in my life that lacked development.

When I was 14, just entering high school, I felt that my impact on the world was a small one. Going from class to class, I focused on achieving high grades, and trying to get into my dream college. For recreation during school, I sauntered over to the library to read the new issue of the Atlantic Monthly, or Rolling Stone.

At home it was similar—homework, recreational reading, then surfing, hanging out with friends, etc. But it would be marked by periods of extreme melancholy when I took time to truly penetrate the bubble that I lived in and see all the dark spots in my otherwise perfect world. What was wrong? Feelings of powerlessness flooded my mind. What was I doing? How could I live in a world so centered on my sole existence? It was too easy to get caught up in this day-to-day routine. Why wasn’t anybody doing anything? I asked. Why wasn’t I doing anything?

My own personal experience with service started with that compelling urge to make a positive impact on the world around me. I was also very lucky, because my teachers were the ones who inspired me. My first service experience began with an oceanography class taught by Ricky Grigg (a world-class oceanography professor, and a legendary surfer). After seeing his enthusiasm for our ocean, I decided that I wanted to make sure this precious natural resource stayed healthy. I cleaned my beaches, got involved with a couple Sierra Club projects, and planted some pollution-reducing plants in one of our extremely polluted canals.

A view of the Mokoluas from Lanikai, Kailua

Unsure of where the next step would be, I enrolled in an AP Environmental Science class taught by the late Jeremiah Johnson, hoping to learn more about the earth, and potential ways to improve it. I was incredibly lucky to have a teacher who was so passionate about our ability to change convention, and although he is no longer with us, the lessons that he taught me have changed my life. Learning the dynamics of global warming, the negative effects of the mono-cropping and inorganic farming culture, and all of the other hot topics surrounding our environment from a man who actually practiced what he preached was an experience that I would never forget.

With a passion, I seized the day. I found outlets for my feelings of “smallness,” and you could say I’ve been growing ever since. Actively looking for community service projects that I felt I could contribute to, I found a little niche that I could call my own and officially contributed my life as student servant (161 hours of active service projects). Every day I attempt to make small, but important, informed choices, such as taking the bus to school, or eating local organic food.

Most recently I volunteered for a Hawaii organization called Girl Fest, run by Kathy Xian, a womens study professor at the University of Hawaii. Girl Fest’s aim is to prevent violence against women and children through art, film, spoken word, and music. Because I volunteered at this event, learned artists, musicians, filmmakers, and poets taught me about their crafts in ways that a conventional classroom cannot. Inspired by this event, I decided to start planning my own festival, where I hope to incorporate student talent to raise money for Kathy’s organization, Safe-Zone (something that focuses on sex trafficking, as well as domestic violence and rape).

What I have created for myself, this freedom from the four very beautiful but also restrictive walls of my school, has expanded my knowledge exponentially. Before, math was math, writing was writing, geography was geography, art was art, and science was science; now, they are not my focus, but my telescope.

I had to look outside of school to get this satisfaction. Why is that? “Schools, we might say, are mirrors of social beliefs, giving back what citizens put in front of them,” says professor, and Chair of the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University, Neil Postman. If that’s true, then there is no growth, no change. But more importantly, students are deprived of the freedom to explore the world, and form opinions on their own. It takes teachers who are willing to inspire, and encourage education outside of the classrooms to help students find their own service passion. Acceptance of individual thought and ideas is key, and so is the willingness to let go of the rigid rules of conventional teaching.

Students have the potential to institute great change in the world. It’s true that we are the future. Much like we’re speaking up for the silent majority through Students 2.0, we can and should take responsibility for the problems that they see in the world, and go out and make a difference.

A special thanks to Mr. Watson for getting me involved with Students 2.0.

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