This post, written by Jen Carey, originally appeared on
Edudemic. Plagiarism, defined as the “wrongful appropriation” of
another’s words or ideas, is a pervasive problem in schools.
Many teachers and administrators believe that the internet has
caused an explosion of academic dishonesty (a recent PEW survey
of College Presidents would agree). While, most teachers and
administrators are familiar with tools like turnitin that can
catch plagiarism after the fact, there are some ways that
educators can combat plagiarism before it starts! In the new
digital frontier, we need to hold digital literacy at the
forefront when teaching students how to use and incorporate
material into their work. Today’s students are used to rapid
answers to questions via quick searches (again, verified by PEW
in “How Teens Do Research”). While this is not necessarily bad,
it does mean that as educators we need to change the way we
approach research projects in the classroom so that we can teach
students to not only do traditional resea