Avoiding Plagerism
The internet has made it easier than ever to plagiarize, basically taking someone else's work--ideas or information-- and passing it off as your own. Every year, students think it's going to be easier and faster to plagiarize, to copy and paste, or to not cite their sources, then to be good, ethical writers.
First let's review some kinds of plagiarism, with this video from Sea Devil Productions:
First let's review some kinds of plagiarism, with this video from Sea Devil Productions:
(Okay, yes, every single video I viewed on plagiarism was exceptionally cheesy. This one had the best explanations.)
So, to review, what is plagiarism:
Every time you take someone else's work--ideas or information--and present it as your own, that's plagiarism.
Plagiarism is bad because it's unethical. It's not right for you to claim someone else's work as your own work, for you to claim someone else's ideas as your own ideas, or someone else's writing as your own writing.
(Notice how I didn't say I made the video. I gave credit to the people who did make the video. While I am entirely like to make something that cheesy, I didn't make this one.)
Some places where American Experience students run into plagiarism, either accidently or on purpose:
1. Research presentations and papers, when students copy and paste paragraphs of research from the internet, then don't paraphrase that information into their own words. Usually this is from secondary source materials.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer can tell: We read a lot of your writing. We know your tone and voice and style. We can tell if you're using vocabulary that is not usually in your vocabulary, or sentence structures that you don't usually use, or simply a tone or style that doesn't sound like you.
2. Research presentations and papers, when students use source materials without citing their sources. This happens with secondary and primary source documents.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer can tell: We read a lot of the source matreials you read, either before you get to class, or over your shoulders as you research. We conference with you on your research. We watch your progress and give you feedback on your work. When you don't have sources for your research, it's pretty obvious.
3. Writing about literary works, when students steal information and ideas from another classmate.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer can tell: We read everybody's papers; we know when two papers are very similar. In addition, we watch you, conference with you, and give you feedback during discussion of the literary work, during webbing or outlining, and during drafting. We have a good idea of what you understand. We always want you to understand more, absolutlely, but we know when you suddenly come in with giant ideas you didn't have the day before, but yet can't really talk about them or provide detail for them that those ideas weren't yours and you don't really understand them all the way. Furthermore, we've read essays for years, we know if you're taking somebody from a prior year's essay, too.
4. Writing about literary works, when students steal information and ideas from the internet.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer can tell: Again, the writing dosen't sound like you or you can't talk about your ideas in depth.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer try to prevent plagiarism:
1. We create activities, essay questions, and project prompts that don't have write and wrong answers, that ask questions not easily answered by papers people have already written on the internet, including SparkNotes, or PinkMonkey, or Wikipedia. In fact, we pretty much guarantee that you're not going to find your answers on any of those three sites or site likes them. We pretty much guarantee that you're not going to find direct and simple answers to the questions posed by class anywhere on the internet; you'll have to do your own research and make your own conclusions.
2. We teach you to research well, to cite your sources, and to make your own conclusions, and we hold you accountable for those things. We have direct instruction and resources for reference on all these topics. We think these are life skills, college skills, and career skills. With those skills, you don't need to plagiarize.
3. We ask that you submit your papers to PaperRater.com before submitting them to us. PaperRater can check to make sure you don't have pieces of your paper pulled directly from the internet, just in case you've forgotten to paraphrase some of your information.
4. We conference with you and give you feedback on your work often. We want to know what you're doing and we want to give you helpful hints to do it even better. We'll look at your progress, your strategies, and your information and ideas early and often, so we can check early in the process for pieces that might slip in as plagiaiized by accident.
5. We check for sources. A lot.
Consequences of Plagiarism in American Experience:
No, we're not going to flunk you out of class or kick you out of school, like the video says are possibilities.
We will, however, ask you to start over on the assignment, project, or paper. Start completely over. We will simply cross out all the plagiarized pieces, score the paper, project or assignment that way, and then ask you to reassess. Plagiarized work is not your own work, and we won't accept it as such.
Bottom line: We want to teach you how to write, research, and think. Plagiarism only gets in the way of that; you don't learn anything from it besides how to plagiarize. Don't do it.
So, to review, what is plagiarism:
Every time you take someone else's work--ideas or information--and present it as your own, that's plagiarism.
Plagiarism is bad because it's unethical. It's not right for you to claim someone else's work as your own work, for you to claim someone else's ideas as your own ideas, or someone else's writing as your own writing.
(Notice how I didn't say I made the video. I gave credit to the people who did make the video. While I am entirely like to make something that cheesy, I didn't make this one.)
Some places where American Experience students run into plagiarism, either accidently or on purpose:
1. Research presentations and papers, when students copy and paste paragraphs of research from the internet, then don't paraphrase that information into their own words. Usually this is from secondary source materials.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer can tell: We read a lot of your writing. We know your tone and voice and style. We can tell if you're using vocabulary that is not usually in your vocabulary, or sentence structures that you don't usually use, or simply a tone or style that doesn't sound like you.
2. Research presentations and papers, when students use source materials without citing their sources. This happens with secondary and primary source documents.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer can tell: We read a lot of the source matreials you read, either before you get to class, or over your shoulders as you research. We conference with you on your research. We watch your progress and give you feedback on your work. When you don't have sources for your research, it's pretty obvious.
3. Writing about literary works, when students steal information and ideas from another classmate.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer can tell: We read everybody's papers; we know when two papers are very similar. In addition, we watch you, conference with you, and give you feedback during discussion of the literary work, during webbing or outlining, and during drafting. We have a good idea of what you understand. We always want you to understand more, absolutlely, but we know when you suddenly come in with giant ideas you didn't have the day before, but yet can't really talk about them or provide detail for them that those ideas weren't yours and you don't really understand them all the way. Furthermore, we've read essays for years, we know if you're taking somebody from a prior year's essay, too.
4. Writing about literary works, when students steal information and ideas from the internet.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer can tell: Again, the writing dosen't sound like you or you can't talk about your ideas in depth.
How Ms. Ringelspaugh and Mr. Palmer try to prevent plagiarism:
1. We create activities, essay questions, and project prompts that don't have write and wrong answers, that ask questions not easily answered by papers people have already written on the internet, including SparkNotes, or PinkMonkey, or Wikipedia. In fact, we pretty much guarantee that you're not going to find your answers on any of those three sites or site likes them. We pretty much guarantee that you're not going to find direct and simple answers to the questions posed by class anywhere on the internet; you'll have to do your own research and make your own conclusions.
2. We teach you to research well, to cite your sources, and to make your own conclusions, and we hold you accountable for those things. We have direct instruction and resources for reference on all these topics. We think these are life skills, college skills, and career skills. With those skills, you don't need to plagiarize.
3. We ask that you submit your papers to PaperRater.com before submitting them to us. PaperRater can check to make sure you don't have pieces of your paper pulled directly from the internet, just in case you've forgotten to paraphrase some of your information.
4. We conference with you and give you feedback on your work often. We want to know what you're doing and we want to give you helpful hints to do it even better. We'll look at your progress, your strategies, and your information and ideas early and often, so we can check early in the process for pieces that might slip in as plagiaiized by accident.
5. We check for sources. A lot.
Consequences of Plagiarism in American Experience:
No, we're not going to flunk you out of class or kick you out of school, like the video says are possibilities.
We will, however, ask you to start over on the assignment, project, or paper. Start completely over. We will simply cross out all the plagiarized pieces, score the paper, project or assignment that way, and then ask you to reassess. Plagiarized work is not your own work, and we won't accept it as such.
Bottom line: We want to teach you how to write, research, and think. Plagiarism only gets in the way of that; you don't learn anything from it besides how to plagiarize. Don't do it.
