How to Curb Plagiarism in Your Classroom

If our goal is to teach, our students is to learn, and our primary method of assessing that is through assignments and tests; then the highest concern is that of making sure each student has done their own work.

Before we discuss plagiarism, we should mention the term Digital Native. Digital Native is the name many have given the generation of students who have grown up their entire lives with Mobile Phones,Google, YouTube, Torrent Sharing, etc. Usually, the term is pejorative, saying that these students have no social skills, ability to think deeply, or respect for copyright.

All of these are true/false in varying degrees just as much as it would be for any other person on Earth. Stereotypes get us nowhere.

Plagiarism is considered a growing problem within schools because of the pervasiveness of the Internet. Sharing information and  files is so easy that students can find the definition of a word faster than they can say it.

I believe that plagiarism can be curbed if not eliminated from the classroom in a few ways. 

• Plagiarism Checkers - There are free and paid versions of these. They allow you to cut and paste or upload a file to check it against the Internet to see if anyone has already used it. The problem with this is if someone from your own class wants to share with another student the online checker will fail. Basically, it will prevent them from plagiarizing sources but not other students. Additionally, this will only work for written work and not math for example. However, it does have it's place. Google will help you find the one that is right for you.
•  Blooms Taxonomy - In a previous post, I suggested you reflect upon your curriculum and where it is on the Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid. If you are asking your students to recall a definition or equation then you are creating an environment where they simply need to ask a friend or Google for the answer. While you might think that Googling answers is a mentality that needs to be squashed. My challenge remains for you to assess the students through application and creation. It is pretty difficult to copy when each is expected to provide their own thoughts. 
• For those in math, I recommend ALEKS and Accelerated Math. Personally I like ALEKS more because it explains and uses less paper. They both will create differentiated work for students to work at their own pace as well as have different copies of the assignment. If the thought of that creates fear from a grading perspective, fear not for both of these programs will grade them for you.
• Copyright Education - Even veteran teachers are unclear about what constitutes fair use. Teaching students how to cite and when and what is appropriate for each assignment will go a long way. I would imagine this article would be true of any age, but it drives home the importance of clarifying the fine line. I also recommend this resource as it clarifies the law.

I always tell my students that, "No one cheats their way through Medical School". You can rest easy, that if they are cheating now, it will eventually catch up with them. Additionally I will quote Seymour Papert who pioneered Technology in the Classroom decades ago saying, "In the future, people will be hired not for what they  know, but what they are able to find."

Finally, I leave you with this funny and uplifting TED talk.

Using Bloom's Taxonomy to Influence Curriculum

Do you remember learning Blooms Taxonomy when studying to be a teacher? When it comes to the cognitive domain the theory is that Memorization is the foundation of learning but the least likely to be "sticky" and be retained (thanks to Ted for the phrase). The next is understanding, as in Why the Civil War ended as it did as opposed to knowing the dates and states in the North and the South. Or how increasing the height a ball is dropped from will increase its final velocity.

Application is using this information in a real world situation. Every week thousands of students conduct some sort of Lab in science where they recreate a famous experiment and if the intended data and results are collected, the student receives full credit.

The highest level of learning according to Bloom's Taxonomy involves Analyzing, Evaluation, and Synthesis (creation)....let that set in for a second.

We have state and federal standards that we are expected to teach and therefore the students to learn. If you look at those standards, they involve some form of memorization (identify, know) or understanding (explain, describe). Why? Because the best a standardized test can assess by its very nature is memorized facts (multiple choice) and understanding  (extended response/essay).

With so much to teach, so little time, and so much riding on the student's score on these High Stakes Exams, it is no wonder that our students are doing poorly according to International Criterion. We have set the bar at the minimum and even if our students retain everything the best they can hope for is good test scores.

When they leave, will they be able to use that knowledge? Do they even care about using that information anymore? Facts and trivia are great for winning Jeopardy but they fail at inspiring excitement and interest.

As we plan this year fellow teachers, I ask that you consider how you might teach to the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Application, Evaluation, and Synthesis. You would be surprised how much more students will want to learn and how much more they will have learned, when they have built, debated, repurposed, drawn, animated, ignited, and every other word that when uttered to a child evokes a smile.

Is it messy? Yes. Is it hard to assess? Not really. It just doesn't fall under the choices of A,B,C,D. Will you cover less? Perhaps a little, but think of how far a little depth would go. If we are teaching them to synthesize and apply, then they will certainly be able to do so on a test question that they do not understand.

The test makers call it an educated guess, we call it critical thinking.

Please, do not be too hard on yourself if you cannot immediately figure out a way to do this. Any little steps you can take will lead to bigger ones. For some inspiration I recommend the following:

Watch Gever Tulley as he speaks about his Tinkering School where 10 year olds create with power tools.

Imagine what your kids could do if given the opportunity to freely express their creative energy. Tulley has a book out with even more ideas: Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)

Watch Sir Ken Robinson's comedic take on how schools are killing creativity (and how you can stop it). Thanks Marisol for showing this to our staff today!

Finally, if you did not catch my first post about it. Watch Waiting for Superman on September 24th for a compelling tale about our school system and what we can do about it.

Teachers, we have an incredible opportunity to inspire and excite our population. While it may seem daunting, it will result in more fun and learning than ever before. Please be mindful as you plan your curriculum to encourage application, analyzing, evaluation, and creativity.

Any thoughts on the matter? Agree, disagree? What prevents us from doing this everyday and how can we overcome these obstacles?

Tags: education, learning,TED

Creating Video Tutorials for your Class Part 2

Video tutorials are an incredible technology, but like any technology their power is only manifested in how they are used. I can only offer my own suggestions because every environment is different and like anything else you will need to adapt video tutorials to your needs and your students' resources.

After you have created your videos, you have a few options depending on your school's IT policy and your student populations' access to technology:

1. Upload the videos to YouTube. This is best if your students have wide access to YouTube either through phones, home or school use. This will prevent you from having to convert the videos or have a place to host them.
   
   
2. Share the videos through a Google site. Assuming this is your class site, you can add notes and other information to help your students.
3. Email the videos or place them on a cd/flash drive. If you wish to do this then I would encourage you to convert them to a smaller file type like an FLV. The software I recommend for doing this is WinFF as it is free and versatile. I will do a more in depth tutorial on WinFF in the next post but for now all you need to know for now is:
1. Install and then open WinFF
2. Click "Add"
3. Click on the "Convert to " drop-down menu and choose "Websites"
4. Then on the "device preset" drop-down menu choose "FLV for fullscreen"
5. Note the output folder and change it if you would like.
6. Click convert
4. If your students do not have the option to watch video readily available on their own, you might need to make computers available before/after school or lunch. If there are a lot of students who need this perhaps having it play on the projector at lunch.

In any case depending on how many videos you have for your students and the pace of your curriculum, I would stress how important it is to give your students a couple of days to watch it in case they need accommodations like choices 3 or 4.

Now you have shared your videos with your classroom (and the world)! So what will you do with your extra class time? I would stress how important it is to still have that dialog with your students about the content where you can answer questions and clarification. However, now your students have had a day or so to process the information and they will have more questions and perhaps you can go more in depth than you previously could have.

This is also a wonderful opportunity for you to introduce multiple learning styles into your classroom. With so much to cover this was always a struggle, but now think of all of the projects, labs, debates, plays, hands-on-activities, etc you can go through with the students (they could even make their own creative videos!). So often I never truly understood a concept until I was able to kinesthetically interact with it so I encourage you to be creative in all of the different ways you can cover a concept.

Please don't just continue on with the curriculum or try and cover more. One of the biggest criticisms of American Education is that it is a mile long and an inch deep. Your students need more than a day to develop an interest and understanding of the content. I always keep a chart of Bloom's taxonomy to help me determine how I should plan my lessons so that they increase in their depth of understanding as the week/month progresses.

Most importantly, we are liberated from lectures. While we still need to produce the video, it can be played over and over again and will allow us the freedom to spend more time going in depth with our students. 


Did you become a teacher so you could mindlessly talk for hours about the information that could be just as easily obtained from a textbook or website? Or did you do it because of your passion for the content and the magical moments with students, helping them understand and develop interest.

You are free to be the teacher you always wanted to be, this is technology properly utilized.

If you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, tips, please leave a comment.

Thanks as always for reading!