Journal #2

A War of Words by Jim Patterson

This was such an interesting article, and it raised many questions in my mind. First, I see how gray an area plagiarism can be. I experienced this first hand while reading the article. I printed a hard copy to make notes--my own thoughts--in the margins. Right above paragraph #20, in the margins, I wrote: threat=reduction. In paragraph #21, the exact same word was used--threat--and a more elaborate explanation of my own explanation of "reduction", when discussing how sometimes by just having plagerism programs, plagerism can be reduced. I was one step ahead of the content this article, coming up with "threat=reduction". Now, if I had used the idea of threat=reduction in a paper, with the word "threat" as it appears in the article, I wonder if might be considered plagerism, as the same thing is said in the article, especially if a plagerism program was used to check my work. However, it came straight out of my mind, before I read what the article said. We are all human, and often share similar thoughts and use similar words.

1. How can I deter plagerism in my classroom? I think by teaching students the correct way to gather information--collecting items on index cards, for example--and teaching them the correct way to give credit to those whom they have gathered information from is one of the best deterrents. I don't think everyone plagerizes on purpose. Sometimes, I believe it can simply be because one does not know how to do what I mentioned above.

2. Is plagerism software useful or necessary? It seems that if students know there is such software being used to check their work, plagerism goes down. However, as I stated above, there are gray areas of plagerism that couldn't be detected accurately by such software.