From Information to Knowledge: Also in Science
This article discusses the merit of publishing scholarly journals online and how protecting intellectual property is not the only problem. Reissuing articles - reworking them so they look like new information (plaigerism) is becoming a hazard to the Science community.
Why is this important to education? Students do all types of research online - for papers, current events, articles, etc.and they must be able to tackle the job of figuring out whether or not their research is authentic, stolen, of poor quality - any number of landmines students must be wary of when they conduct online research. In today's society since there is a heavier reliance on internet research, students should be taught how to properly navigate the internet for optimal research.
...Thank you again to Huffingtonpost.com for providing me with a great/interesting article!!
Shelby, what is your opinion on using programs that compare a body of work to other published sources to check for plagiarism?
ReplyDeleteKevin,
DeleteNot having personal experience with that type of program I can only hazard a guess. I like the premise of them - it eases the amount of searching a teacher has to do in order to capture plaigerism - they are a nice little tool. With the internet being the prevalent research tool of students today, it can be difficult to find exactly where a student has taken information.
I am sure it has pitfalls as well - how accurate they are, what is the margin for error - questions like that come to mind when I consider those programs.
Shelby,
ReplyDeleteI find this to be a prevalent challenge for many students. I feel that this also applies to determining what written research work is scholarly. Oftentimes, it is difficult to discern what work is scholarly and what work, such as those postings on Wikipedia, are just a collection of ideas and concepts from a wide variety of sources which may be taken out of context. Another challenge for students is knowing how to properly cite information to avoid plagiarism. This can be a daunting task particularly because there is a fine line between paraphrasing and stealing a scholar's intellectual property. How will you ensure that your students are well versed in these respects?
Shelby,
ReplyDeleteI encounter this problem every semester.Is the source I am looking at reliable? Can I trust it? Is it outdated? Am I using original work? etc. I have to agree with Ellen as well. In regards to citing information, we have come to depend heavily on the internet as our source for accomplishing small tasks such as citing. I must admit that I do not know off the back of my hand how to cite an online journal article, and I do not belive students are being taught it now. They are becoming used to using online citation machines. I think as educators, we must be able to decide when technology is important to use in the classroom, and when we must forgo using it. In instances such as citing, I believe we should teach students the old pen and paper way, and then look towards technology as a way to reinforce what they learned. Do you believe that students have maintained this lessons?
Accompanying these citation lessons, teachers can then turn to look at the validity of the citations they make. Something that stuck with me in my middle school days was that if a website is .org, or .edu, it is okay to use as a source. But websites that end in .com are not always reliable. Technology is a great source to teach them all of these approaches.