Unfortunately, I was not in attendance to the school field trip, as much as I would have loved to be. So instead of my last blog being a fun one on the smart board, it's on question 1 on page 507. When I was in grade school, we had a computer lab, but I also remember having a card catalogue as well. It was quickly fading out as the new technology was coming in, and those are vague memories, and the rest is computers. I remember my very fist computer class that I hated with a passion, our computers had the green letters in the program we were using. All I remember was hating my teacher, hating that class, and always getting F's on my computer papers. It mainly consisted of making pictures out of letters and having correct spaces. Fail.
So since the use of technology in schools has come a long way, so has research for term papers. When I was in high school, I remember fellow students taking works from the Internet and using those as their own. I never had the guts to do such a thing, but I did find it rather interesting that they could fool a teacher, or so I thought because I never had found out whether or not they were caught. One student my senior year was caught, she was a star athlete, honors student, you name it, model student, and her punishment was getting an "f" on her paper and one week detention. Had it been another student from our BD self contained classroom that was hidden in the back of the school, there would have been greater consequences.
Today, you can google term papers, and many come up as PDF files or documents and are the subject you need or close to. I find it very disturbing that such things are so popular, and yet many students fall through the cracks and get away with using it. At the same time, there are students who are able to properly write a research paper and write it well, and yet they are accused for plagiarizing even though they hadn't. This happened to me for our first paper my senior year, and so I had to submit my others papers and grades from past English classes, have a meeting with my parents, and write on the spot so I could prove my innocence. I hadn't come from the best educational background entering my senior year, and I guess they felt every right to not trust me.
However, with all of the plagiarizing that goes on, teachers need to be extremely cautious. For technology teachers, I am sure they have an array of sites and tools at their disposal in order to see whether or not a student has plagiarized. Yet, for many other teachers they are not so lucky, and may not know exactly where to look for a credible source to check. All teachers should have resources to check whether documents are plagiarized or not. I once heard from my freshman college English teacher, that when in doubt, cite; to cite anything that wasn't our own thoughts. I feel that any student, honors or not, should be given the same punishment. Plagiarizing is pure laziness, and they are obviously a smart student, because they took the time and effort to find a paper, edit and turn in. It shows brains, however useful, and so they could have used that time and effort in actually doing their own work. In high school, students should be given a failing grade for that assignment, and put on academic probation. The next occurrence they fail the course and must re-take it in summer school. In college, similar consequences should occur, you do it once, you fail the assignment, you do it again and you fail the course and are dropped and placed on academic probation for one year; any further occurrences results in being dismissed from the college.
I know these are rather harsh, but need to be done in these events. Teachers just need to take every precaution available in order to keep students and cathing them when and if they plagiarize. Studnets should be sure to cite in every area and thought that is not theirs, and should include a reference list.
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