Copyright and Plagiarism:
I think this issue with technology will most relevant to the level I will be teaching. With not many stern punishment and mechanisms in place to stop it – secondary schooling as opposed to university is where I believe a lot of plagiarism can take place. “The internet may also be redefining how students – who came of age with music-file sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking – understand the concept of authorship and singularity of any text or image” (Gabriel, 2010). I find this to be such an interesting point, because it relates back to that idea of digital natives. The problem here is that when you are teaching a generation of digital natives – who grew up in a world where piracy and the illegal downloading of movies, music, games etc is so normalized that they can almost become desensitized towards this issue – it becomes difficult to teach them that plagiarism is wrong when their entire understanding of authorship is shaky to begin with.
In my opinion a way in which teachers and educators can approach the issue of plagiarism is not only teaching students that it is wrong from an authorship perspective, because it is through angle that it is hard to reach students due to its normalization in other spheres like the illegal downloading of music and movies. An emphasis should be placed upon the idea of importance of ethics and morality as a whole. It might sound corny but I think if the foundation of these basic concepts are weak with this young generation maybe we should aim to strengthen them for the overall betterment of society. Things like teaching, concepts of self-betterment through attainment of knowledge, the fact that cheating is not only restricted to assessments but can find its way in your daily life and impact on you negatively and so forth. This however, is a more critical approach attacking the root of the issue, but there are programs like ‘turnitin’ which have really been successful tracking down on plagiarism and approaching this issue for more technical perspective.
References
Roblyer, M., & Doering, A. (2014). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching: International Edition, 6th Edition, Pearson.Gabriel, T. (2010). Plagiarism Lines Blur For Students. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html?_r=0
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