[etni] Re: : warning about Project plagiarism
- From: Judi Granit <judiavi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ETNI <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2007 10:48:26 +0200
In relation to Ruth's post about kids using the internet to translate Hebrew
information into English and presenting it as their own; a few tips:
Insist the kids hand in their "working files" with their projects with all the
information on which the project is based (in addition to the bibliography)
When summarizing articles they should ALWAYS attach the original article to
their summary.
Getting kids to write projects on "heroes" or similar subjects does seem to
lend itself to plagiarism. However, giving specific guidelines about what to
include within the project does help. For example, instead of writing a
"paper" or essay on a general topic, there should be very specific questions
that the kids should answer like "when and how did you first meet/hear of this
person?" Rather than giving them the freedom to write whatever they want about
the person (or finding it on the internet).
It may sound oxymoronic (sp?) but when I ask for any written work that the kids
prepare at home, I will not accept "perfect" work. I always tell them that I
know that they are NOT native speakers therefore I do not expect or accept work
that has been written/corrected by native English speakers before reaching me.
I don't want their private teachers or the internet to do their work for them
or for me; correcting is part of my work.
With the project work, at our school we try and encourage students to write
their own work by allowing them to present a rough draft of the project before
any grade is given. It is made clear to the kids that we EXPECT them to make a
lot of language mistakes and that is acceptable and desirable as indicators
that they have done the work themselves and we understand that they are
learners of the language and not natives. The teacher corrects the mistakes and
writes helpful comments and the students go back and correct. The grade is
given only on the final version only.
Lastly, I strongly recommend using an "umbrella topic" that changes every year
to avoid the kids just copying/stealing projects from other kids. Some of you
may remember the story of our experience a couple of years ago when we went to
test the oral bagrut in a school that had given their students the freedom to
choose any topic they liked for a project and we found ourselves examining kids
on the "discrimination" projects which they had copied from our own students
from the year before!
I must admit that I am a total convert when it comes to the project work in
the NBA. Although admittedly I have been doing them with 5 point classes only,
I can honestly say that they have been a tremendous success at our school. The
students have written some interesting and often contraversial projects and
they have been rewarding for everyone.
(By the way if you suspect something "fishy" is going on, you can always
"google" one of the exact suspicious phrases in the pupil's work and usually
you come up with the on-line source. It happened when my class did a
book-report-like task after reading one of the short stories "Mr Know All" a
few of them copied from a terribly badly written essay that was posted on the
net. )
Best wishes,
Judi G.
.
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