Chapter V

Focus Question: How can teachers respond to problems of plagiarism when students use online sources?

The most obvious answer is that the teacher can ask for a student to cite his or her sources. There are also various webtools teachers may use such as TurnItIn, which is a plagiarism checker marketed towards teachers and professors. The internet might actually make plagiarism harder because a teacher can simply look up a few sentences and usually find the original article. In the old days, the teacher would have to siphon through dozens of textbooks if he suspected a student of cheating.

Tech Tool: Flickr

Ah, the mighty Flickr. Flickr has come under my radar before: it's the ultimate tool for photographers. Flickr is a photo sharing website much like other social networks but with a specialization in photography. Teachers could implement Flickr as a visual learning resource and by holding online discussions and picture sharing among groups of students.

Reaction:

This chapter contains a comprehensive section on types of information problems and responses to those problems. There's multiple categories including: misinformation, malinformation, messed-up information, and mostly-useless information. There's also the problem of censored information and the inherent dangers of censorship in our society.

A little later there's a section dedicated to Wikipedia. It contrast Wikipedia's open-source policy to that of an encyclopedia in which a number of board members write it. It talks about trust issues some teachers have with the site because it is not evaluated by a panel of 'experts' as with other encyclopedias  Personally I think Wikipedia is the best thing since sliced bread and will encourage my students to use it. If nothing else, it provides a good list of sources a student can use.

I answered the focus question about how teachers can deal with the problems of plagiarism and later on in the chapter it discusses that very topic. I found out some sites even offer ghost-written essays students can buy for money. Other times, students have a problem with actually knowing when they have crossed the plagiarism line. It is my thoughts that teachers should establish a clear guide at the beginning of the semester on what exactly constitutes plagiarism  But of course, the best way to avoid plagiarism altogether is to create assignments that cannot be plagiarized in the first place.