Jamaica High School understands the value and concept of intellectual property. We strongly believe and insist that our students should do their own research and, when borrowing ideas or text from others, should properly document their sources. Bruce Leland, in his article, Copy Me: Plagiarism and the Web, advises us to teach students how people legitimatly use one another’s ideas and acknowledge their work. (The entire article is available at: http://www.wiu.edu/users/mfbhl/wiu/plagiarism.htm.)

Mr. Leland advises teachers to give specific and clear assignments which will pique student's imagination. Assign papers to be written in class. Have students research their approved topics and then bring their research to class to write their report. Observe them writing. Teach them how to summarize information and to give proper credit to the source or authors of the information they use.

Mr. Leland urges that we teach students the laws of copyright and guidelines for fair use. A chart detailing copyright and fair use guidelines adapted by Kathy Schrock may be downloaded for classroom use from the following webpage . (March 2005).

He also urges that we remind students that plagiarism is stealing and there will be consequences.

For excellent worksheets about plagiarism go to Joyce Valenza’s School Library Page (Springfield Township HS Virtual Library, last updated February 2005) which leads to a discussion of what plagiarism is and the moral and ethical issues raised.

To help your students cite sources properly, I suggest teaching the MLA style and referring our students to our web page, which has links to The Citation Machine and also to A Guide to Citation Formatting on the CW Post College Library site (by Robert Delaney).

For handouts about plagiarism, I recommend: OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue University and OWL handout: Avoiding Plagiarism.

PROBLEMS? TELL US ABOUT THEM.

Ellen Frank

G. Calandro

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