Customer Reviews

Student Cheating and Plagiarism in the Internet Era: A Wake-Up Call

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I never realized there were so many different ways to cheat on tests in school or to use the Internet to steal somebody else's paper to hand in instead of writing your own. And I had no idea that such a high percentage of students cheat and plagiarize. Now I know what clues to watch for to be sure my son is doing his own work in middle school. I also like the guidelines that tell me how to help my son do his homework and school projects without our being dishonest about it. There are good suggestions for working effectively with school administrators and teachers. Many of the chapters list web sites that have additional information on the chapter's topic. Any parent of a middle school or high school student will learn a lot from this book.

Internet literacy is a great gift in learning but students must learn to reference properly. As a teacher I learned valuable information about the more overt forms of plagiariasm that show up in classroom assignments; as a parent I learned what to look for when my child takes the easy way out instead of coming up with his own ideas. Very useful book!

As someone who has been in the education field for years, I feel compelled to point out that this book does not adequately address the legal loopholes involved in "compiling" versus "plagiarizing." While plagiarizing, as all who have tangled with it know, is something engaged in by those lacking in imagination and is relatively easy to accomplish on the internet, compiling is a much more subtle, sophisticated way of stealing and utilizing the ideas of others and honing them in such a way as to make it very difficult to determine from whence they have come. Indeed, while plagiarism will undoubtedly earn you an F in most courses, compiling can often earn you up to a B with no one the wiser.