![]() Chapter 9 Prompt: Imagine that you are a high school social science teacher. You have assigned students a ten-page research paper. How do you set-up the assignment to make it clear that plagiarism will not be tolerated and what tools would you use to check for plagiarism? What steps would you take if a student’s paper is found to have been copied in parts from the Internet? This prompt is definitely ironic considering that I dealt with this very issue in my Zoology class back in the spring. As a new teacher, I was trying to be considerate of different learning styles and gave my students a choice of end-of-unit assessments. They could take a traditional test, write a 2-page essay on the topic of my choosing, or record a 10-minute presentation on the topic of my choosing. To say this experiment failed was an understatement, largely because I was not clear enough in my intent/instructions/rubric. In my second unit, I had 10 students choose to write the essay. When I started to read/grade the first one, some of the wording (without quotation marks or citation) seemed odd. It didn’t take me much research to find the source the student plagiarized. A little frustrated, I went on to the next paper, and found that the student had plagiarized the entire 2-page essay verbatim without citation or quotations. After reading all 10 essays and having only 1 written without plagiarism, I was pulling my hair out to say the least. As I previously mentioned, I do take partial blame for not being clear enough, so I came up with a solution. My solution was that the students that had plagiarized their essay had three choices: 1) re-write/ re-submit their essay within a week, 2) take the zero as their grade or 3) attend a plagiarism workshop that I would conduct after school. Well all of them picked choice #3, which ultimately ended up as a packet on plagiarism due to the fact that the school kept canceling tutoring for the day I choose for the workshop (Tutoring= a late bus to take students home). You would not believe the flak and push-back I had from both the students AND their parents for how I decided to handle the issue. Most thought that as a science teacher, it was outside my purview to be concerned with issues of academic plagiarism and let their opinions be known to my principle and district-level administrators. Needless to say, I have learned from this experience. In the future, if I assign an essay for the students to complete, I plan to first devote a significant portion of instruction towards essay construction/ planning and what plagiarism is in addition to building multiple steps where students have to submit their thesis statement, an outline, and at least 1 rough draft to ensure that they are on the correct path. Additionally, I am going to have the students turn it in electronically via Turnitin, and time will be provided to students to have access to a computer or Chromebook during class time or after school if they do not have access at home to technology. I believe that it is definitely part of my purpose as an educator to ensure that my students know how to write an essay correctly even as a science teacher and will not shrink from that manifest despite the opinions of others. For those students advancing to higher education, academic plagiarism is a huge deal, and most colleges/universities have very strict, no tolerance policies regarding it. Better students learn about it and take it seriously in high school before they stake their entire college career on a mishap, in my opinion.
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Project #2-5 Reflections:
This week the group projects involved creating a lesson plan utilizing and incorporating technology, an online survey, a Google document & slide presentation, and a podcast. And I may be biased, but my group is awesome! I must commend both Jana and Jon because they both chose unfamiliar technology to tackle all while dealing with unfamiliar content! Terry did a great job too in keeping us all on track and making sure everything was covered and completed in a timely fashion. I cannot wait for our next round of projects to work with even cooler Web resources! 😊 Project #2- Lesson Plan Project #3- Technology Survey Project #4 - Google Document Project #4- Google Slides Project #5- Podcast ![]() Chapter 7 Prompt: What are the challenges you faced with when integrating Web resources into classroom teaching and learning? Any resolution suggestions? Integrating Web resources into the classroom at times is easy, and other times it is challenging. There are 2 challenges that are particularly irritating to me. First, the big challenge that I encountered in the classroom was keeping students on-task. It seems that whenever I allow students to use the Chromebook in my classroom, they want to do check their grades on ActiveStudent or watch videos on YouTube. Thankfully, I have access to FamilyZone that allows me to ‘see’ what all the students are doing on while online and can block their access. However, students are smart and constantly try to get around my blocks. Students will get very upset when I completely block their internet access if they get repeatedly warned to do their assignments. I try to emphasize and teach them how to use both their time and resources wisely otherwise I cannot use the technology and all the benefits of technology in the classroom. One rule that I plan on trying out this fall is that students will have to appeal to get internet access reinstated if they fail to stay on task and lose my trust. The second challenge with teenagers is more general in teaching students to be responsible while using the internet, in particular social networking websites. I would have informal discussions occasionally when we used Chromebooks regarding the permanence of their content they share on the internet. For instance, I talked about how Facebook posts could influence future employers during the hiring process. I would give the example of a college professor I knew that was denied a position at another college because he had “I dig dead people” on his MySpace site. While it was an ironic statement because he was an osteologist/bioarcheologist who recovered and studied the skeletal remains of prehistoric and historic people, it was also of poor choice that could reflect negatively on his level of respect for the deceased, which could be reflected negatively on the college. I personally use Facebook to keep in touch with family and close friends and only post about 4 things: running/races, my artwork, my dog & cat, and my nephews. I also occasionally will do a google search with my name to see what pops up, and it really is limited to race results and academic endeavors I have participated in. Students do not think about such things, and it is our job as educators to introduce them to such in order to get them ready for the world outside of school. |
AuthorHi! My name is Nicole, and I am a high school science teacher. Blog Roll
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