Technology is advancing
at an extremely fast pace all around me. I have begun to understand the impact
it has on our culture. People are more connected today than ever before, and
the trend is not stopping. The Internet provides access to just about any information
imaginable and much more quickly than looking it up in a book. Because of the
convenience and immediacy provided by the Internet, it is often the source
turned to for information. The Internet provides access to reference materials,
experts, and other students, all of which can be valuable throughout the
learning process.
With technology becoming
such an integral part of society, teachers have an obligation to prepare themselves
and our students to use it in a responsible manner. ISTE has developed
technology standards and performance indicators aimed at helping teachers to
become effective users of technology. One particular indicator I would like to
improve upon is teaching my students to respect the work of others by giving
credit where credit is due. With information so readily available, I want my
students to learn to respect the thoughts and work of others by documenting
their sources.
In order to achieve this goal, I plan on
teaching my students about copyright and plagiarism. I will practice with my
students how to use the thoughts of someone else to build upon their learning.
I will work through the process of taking information and synthesizing to
create a unique and original thought. I will monitor my students to ensure they
are providing the sources they used in supporting their thoughts and ideas and
will continue to model this behavior myself. As the students become more
skilled at giving credit to the source of information, I plan to extend their
learning by including the information in a formal reference list. I will
practice this skill with my students until they are ethical users of
technology.
A second goal I have for
myself is to become a leader in my school for technology integration in the
classroom. As I get more accustomed to using a variety of technologies in my
classroom, I want to promote its usage by showing my colleagues how it can be
used as an effective teaching and learning tool. I will help to develop the
skills of others by modeling technology integration and acting as a personal
resource for them. I will make sure that I am achieving my goal by continually
trying new technologies and sharing my discoveries with others. I am committed
to trying new technologies and using them to further my students’ content learning.
References:
National Education
Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf.
Tom, Your goals are both worthwhile and educationally sound, in my opinion! I struggle with my 9th and 10th graders not knowing how to give proper credit for their findings on the Internet. They get pretty good at citing a magazine article, or giving the correct citation for the book they're written an analysis on. But for whatever reason, they are of the mindset that whatever they find on the Net is theirs and everyone's!
ReplyDeleteI have learned through our Walden work that every little skills we want the students to learn must be taught, so I'm committed this year to getting students used to giving proper credit. I am going to start very small, having them react to an online article, for instance, and then having them include one quote from the article that they properly introduce, and then having them cite that source correctly. If I can do a number of simple one-step activities, they may start to understanding the importance of copyright and plagiarism.
I would bet you are a technology leader in your school already, just by modeling what you do every day in your classroom. I agree that it is important that we take what we are learning in our coursework and share/teach others. It's all for the good of the students in the end!
I have felt your frustration when it comes to your students and not giving credit in their writing. I feel the same way about my students when they seem to feel that everything on the Internet is fair game for their own use and credit.
DeleteOne way I plan on moving towards having my students become better skilled in this area is to require a mention of the Author or the site in their writing. I am not talking about quotes or data, but a sentence before or after acknowledging where the information came form. Not only will this impress upon the students that this information has come from someone else, but it helps them develop higher level writing skills that they will encounter in secondary education.
It is important to make sure that our students know about plagiarism rules. This is something that I am also interested in improving in our school, although at our school, the students have lots of chances to improve on this skill. They get to practice it is 6th and 7th grade lit/science class when they do the science fair project we have, and in 8th grade when they do the history fair we have at our school.
ReplyDeleteThis is also something I think that as the teacher I need to do a better job of. I know that as a teacher, students see work that we make for our students each day. For example, when I teach about the different parts of the periodic table, I use a PowerPoint and I take most of my pictures from the same site. I have added to that PowerPoint now a little blurb about where I get the pictures from. I know this is not something the students maybe notice, but it does model for them the correct way to give credit to the proper authors of the information.
Thanks so much for sharing your post. I enjoyed reading it!
Dan,
DeleteI love that you model for your students how to avoid plagiarism. This is a really important topic in most schools today, especially with the availability of technology growing in the classrooms. I feel that most students understand the concept of plagiarism and why it is bad, but I feel they lack the skills to properly avoid it in their work. Modeling in our own presentations and examples is a great way to get the students to see first hand what they need to do.
I know what you mean by stating that your not that great a detecting plagiarism. I too feel that I could be doing a better job pointing out to my students where they are going wrong in their work. I did however find that in most applications, a quick scroll over with the mouse on your computer and it can detect if the text was copied and pasted from a different source. This has proven It only took a few times of pointing this feature out to the students before they started spending a little more time making someone else's work their own.