Text Box: Northfield Elementary School Text Box: With more and more students using the internet today, it is important for us as educators, to train our students early about citing references and plagiarism. With almost 86% of our student population having interest access in their homes, they are just a mouse click away from thousands of resources, which can lead to possible plagiarism. With detailed reviews and endless websites, it is a simple task for a student to fake a book report. We have all seen when a student turns in a college level book report. Many Howard County middle and high schools, already subscribe to a program that catches plagiarism and I believe we should arm ourselves with as many resources as we can to combat this growing concern. By training our students at a young age, that plagiarism in any form will not be tolerated, perhaps the need for these expensive subscription services will become obsolete. Hopefully, these tips will be of a benefit to you and your students.

Plagiarism: What you should know

What constitutes plagiarism?

 

· Use of another person’s words or ideas without stating where they came from. A form of theft.

 

Why Be concerned?

· It’s dishonest

· It’s unfair to you and your other students

· It’s illegal under the Copyright Act of 1968.

 

There are two types of plagiarism:

 

Deliberate and Accidental.

These are self explanatory, but regardless of

intent the act of plagiarism is still wrong and illegal.

Ways to check plagiarism

 

Turnitin.com—A highly sophisticated prevention program to eliminate plagiarism and arm teachers with a defense mechanism. Searches all active websites for matches of text.

 

Google—By typing the offending text

surrounded by quotes in the search

window, Google will return websites that have matching text.

 

Amazon—Great for checking book reviews to compare against a book report. Their recent business venture into

textbooks makes this website an

invaluable source.