Assess your experiences producing information with computer
and communications technology. Have you created podcasts, websites, blogs, or
videos in your classroom? How? What were the results?
I hate to say it, but my experience producing information with computer and communications technology is fairly limited. Although my school has excellent technological resources overall, it is sometimes a struggle to get computer time at school for each student. It used to be that there were only 35 laptops and 11 desktop computers in the library, however there has been an increase in available computers over the past couple of years, which has coincided with the new availability of programs such as Moodle, Microsoft Photo Story (Story Teller), and others. Of course my students have produced and submitted work using Microsoft Office and flash drives, however the recently there has been a trend towards having the students submit and publish work through Moodle. I have also used classroom websites and Facebook to anonymously publish and display student work. I have used wikis and blogs as part of lessons and projects in the past as well as a means of publishing student work.
I have had mixed results with these forms of publishing work. Most students enjoy having their work published online and on our networks, however I have also noticed an increase in plagerism as a result. Often when we do projects with on-line publishing, multiple teachers within the department collaborate and assign our students the same projects. Because of this, we have caught student in one class plagerizing the work of a student in another class, thinking that we teachers do not check each other's sites and boards. This is something I feel will decrease with time and experience as the students learn that we do indeed check these things and we as teachers learn how to better prevent this.
What a great teaching moment when the increase in plagiarism was discovered. Teaching them the importance at an early age is so important. The consequences for plagiarism rise drastically as a student ages and could result in life-long ramifications by the time they are in college.
ReplyDeleteA communication arts teacher I worked with did a unit on poetry. At the start of the unit she explained the meaning of plagiarism and provided details. When pieces were turned in she entered random selections into a search engine to check for matches. She also checked any she felt were suspicious. Sadly she did find one paper that was taken directly from the internet. While the student received a zero for the paper as well as other consequences, I believe this is a lesson that will stay with the student.
Here is an article on why Google is a great tool in checking for plagiarism along with links for other tools. http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2010/02/09/5-reasons-google-is-my-primary-plagiarism-checker/
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DeleteUsing the internet to publish work does have it's negative aspects, but I think as we teach our students how to use technology responsible and we as teachers learn to use new tools like Val shared it will become uncommon. Plagarism has always been around, the use of the internet will increase this but hopefully we will continue to get new tools to prevent it.
ReplyDeleteI think this is somethine we all come across at onepoint or another. It is up to use to turn that into a teaching moment. Thanks, Val, for sharing the plagiarism tool.
ReplyDeleteReally pertinent topic. This is a part of "digital citizenship," right? We have to teach them the right way to use the Web, and I think the best (only?) way we can do this is to model the correct behavior. We have to make sure we are following copyright laws and fair use guidelines and not plagiarizing any of our work. Kids can use search engines too.
ReplyDeleteThis is completely pertinent to this week's textbook readings and lecture. You are correct Rob, this is a part of digital citizenship. Were lessons explicitly taught on what plagerism is and what it means to copyright work? If students are not taught these lessons, is it fair to punish them when they break the rules?
ReplyDeleteAnd by the way...from what you describe Jennifer, you seem to have quite a bit of experience with creating content, whether it be your own or sharing your students' work. Give yourself some credit where it is do!
ReplyDelete