FNO May '98 - The New Plagiarism

[Jamie McKenzie <mckenzie@FROMNOWON.ORG>]

ANNOUNCING THE MAY ISSUE . . .

          From Now On
         The Educational Technology Journal

          The New Plagiarism: Seven Antidotes to Prevent Highway Robbery
           in an Electronic Age

                                        by Jamie McKenzie

        NOTE: The full text of this article is available at http://fromnowon.org

        Also, note new articles on professional development which
        originally appeared in eSchool News at http://fromnowon.org/eschool.html

           Introduction: The New Plagiarism
           Antidote 1. Distinguish levels/types of research
           Antidote 2. Discourage  "trivial pursuits"
           Antidote 3. Emphasize essential questions
           Antidote 4. Require and enable students to make answers
           Antidote 5. Focus upon information storage systems
           Antidote 6. Stress "green ink" and citation ethics
           Antidote 7. Assess progress throughout the entire research
process

The following is an excerpt . . .

         Introduction: The New Plagiarism

         Could electronic text spawn a virulent strain of student
         copying?

         Is cut-and-paste the enemy of thought?

         Many teachers who work in "wired schools" are complaining
         that new technologies have made it all too easy for
         students to gather the ideas of others and present them as
         their own.

         The New Plagiarism may be worse than the old because
         students now wield an Electronic Shovel which makes it
         possible to find and save huge chunks of information with
         little reading, effort or originality.

         Is the New Plagiarism any worse than the old?

         Under the old system of "go find out about" topical
         research, it took students a huge amount of time to move
         words from the encyclopedia pages onto white index cards,
         changing one word in each sentence so as to avoid
         plagiarism.

         The New Plagiarism requires little effort and is
         geometrically more powerful. While the pre-modem student
         might misappropriate a dozen ideas from a handful of
         thinkers, the post-modem student can download and save
         hundreds of pages per hour. We have moved from the horse
         and buggy days of plagiarism to the Space Age without
         stopping for the horse less carriage.

         As this article will point out, it is reckless and
         irresponsible to continue requiring Topical "go find out
         about" Research projects in this new electronic context.
         To do so extends an invitation (perhaps even a demand) to
         "binge" on information.

         We have more to worry about here than the Web sites which
         offer term papers for sale (visit WWW.A1-Termpaper.Com) or
         the sites which offer assistance with college essays.

         What we have is a societal shift toward glib and facile
         understandings allied with an archaic school research
         program (in some places) which places little value upon
         questioning and original thought.

         The seven antidotes offered below are intended to cut off
         the virulent new strain of plagiarism before it becomes an
         academic plague.

Continued at http://fromnowon.org

Jamie McKenzie
Editor - "From Now On - The Educational Technology Journal"

mckenzie@fromnowon.org            http://fromnowon.org

901 Twelfth Street
Bellingham, WA 98225
(360) 647-8759
"The question is the answer."  "Hits are not Truth."

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