Web Wonders
Plagiarism
Joanne Troutner
As the school year begins it is a good time to help
teachers and students avoid the pitfalls involved with
plagiarism. This edition of Web Wonders provides some excellent
teaching tools and resources for you and your teaching
colleagues to help students avoid this practice. Consider
developing a lesson for your research teaching sessions,
which explores the practice of plagiarism and the tools
available to expose it.
Please note: All links open in
a new window.
An
Antidote to Plagiarism
Here is a well-crafted lesson on teaching students
in Grades 5-10 how to paraphrase and avoid plagiarism.
Students are encouraged to outline, learn new vocabulary
and think for themselves. The topic for the lesson is
the strawberry poison arrow frog. The lesson is available
online and in printable PDF format.
Avoiding
Plagiarism
This site is designed for college students but
works well with high school students. The handout contains
a well-written description of what plagiarism is, when
to credit and not credit sources, and a set of questions
to help test the student’s understanding and knowledge
of when to cite sources. The site’s handout on paraphrasing
is quite useful. Housed at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_paraphr.html,
this quick handout explains various ways to improve a
writer’s skill at this task.
University
of Alberta Libraries Guide for Faculty
This site includes a discussion of why students
plagiarize, tips for helping prevent this practice, detection
tips and a number of handouts for students. The handouts
contain tips on doing research and paraphrasing information
found in reliable sources.
Plagiarized.com
The sample essays on this site feature three that
are great examples of plagiarism. In addition to providing
the papers in easy-to-print format, instructors are given
a concise list of problems with each essay.
University
of Hong Kong Plagarism
Another good teaching tool is the self-test portion
of this plagiarism site. Students can use this site to
test their writing skills and improve their paraphrasing
ability. The activity can also work well with a single
computer classroom and a projection device.
Cybercheats
Your time will be well spent if you completely explore
this site where you will find wonderful reference tips
and a superb PowerPoint presentation. Students will be
engaged as they travel through Terrible Timmy’s
Tale of Plagiarism and gather practice in spotting plagiarized
work. The site also includes a bibliography of paper
mill sites.
Because
We Care Education Society of Alberta
This organization has developed a superb six-step
tutorial on plagiarism.. The materials are developed to
help teachers cope with the ever increasing challenge of
using the Internet as a reference source and students’ ability
to easily find and plagiarize papers. Student handouts,
suggestions for dealing with suspected and confirmed cheating
and sample plagiarism policies can all be found at this
site.
The
Writing Place’s Tips for Writers
Advanced middle school writers and high school
students will benefit from visiting this site. It features
basic writing hints, a quick one-page self-assessment
guide and well-written suggestions for avoiding plagiarism.
The plagiarism section includes concise examples and
tips for improving the user’s ability to paraphrase.
Quoting,
Paraphrasing and Summarizing (PDF file)
Another useful handout on can be found at this
site. Concise discussions and tips on these writing skills
are provided in a well-designed format. Students may also
want to consult other helpful resources found at The
Learning Centre.
Paper
Mills Sites
Finally, be sure to check out the extensive list
of paper mill sites on this site. There are over 225 general
sites listed, and a link to a list of subject specific
paper mill sites.
PowerPoint Presentations on Plagiarism
One
Power Point presentation developed by Suzanne Preate
was used at a professional development session for junior
and senior high school teachers.
http://web.syr.edu/~smpreate/plagiarism2002.ppt
Another well-developed
presentation by Sheila Walrath, teacher-librarian
at the Marcos de Niza High School Learning Resources & Technology
Center, is at
A third
option designed to help high school teachers discourage
plagiarism and cheating can be found at:
Guide
to Grammar & Writing
This site provides a number of well-structured
teaching materials for helping strengthen students’ writing
skills and make avoiding plagiarism even easier for them.
The sections on essay and research papers and the PowerPoint
presentations are especially useful.
Amistad
Students can also learn about plagiarism by studying
the lawsuit involved with this movie. Information housed
here can serve as the basis of the discussion. Be sure
to have students examine the handout on the similarities
between “Echo of Lions” and “Black Mutiny.”
PBS
Another learning opportunity for high school students
can be found at the PBS web site. Here students will
read the transcript of a Newshour with Jim Lehrer segment
on writing history, which talks about plagiarism. This
well-crafted lesson sparks classroom discussion and helps
students wrestle with the concept of plagiarism.
Please contact me at troutner@mindspring.com with suggestions
and ideas or check out my web site at http://home.mindspring.com/~troutner for other great sites. Also, please remember that when
using addresses on the Internet you need to pay attention
to upper and lower case letters and that addresses change
rapidly. Thus, you may find the ones highlighted are
different by the time you actually see this column in
print.
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