Journal #5

September 25, 2013
Chapter 5 Researching and Evaluating Internet Information

Focus Question 5 How can teachers respond to problems of plagiarism when students use online sources?
Teachers can use multiple ways to prevent students from plagiarizing, whether they know they are doing it or not. There are websites such as turnitin.com, ithenticate.com, and canexus.com that electronically scan their papers to check for information copied from other sources. Even before giving out an assignment, teachers should go over rules that help the students stay away from plagiarizing. They should distinguish the type of research they should be conducting, stay focused on essential questions, have students develop their thinking and construct their own answers, stress using citations, and assess their work as they are doing an assignment. Teachers should instruct students to critically think about the information they are using.

Tech Tool 5.1
Pictures, videos, and sound are an ideal way to keep students awake. They are visually stimulating and make any lesson worth their time. Flickr is a website where people can share photos, and there are instructional options for teachers to use in the classroom. It allows you to divide your photos into different groups so maybe you can have a tab for school and another for hobbies. These photos can also be used in slideshows, calendars, photo books, cards, and stamps. After visiting Flickr, I learned I could search for anything and a variety of pictures would appear. If I wanted to get more in depth in my search, I could use the advanced search option to limit my pictures. Also, I can find my friends and view their photos as well. Another website was LibriVox, which has free audio sounds from books to other publish materials. Their goal is to make every public domain book free on audio and available to us! Teachers can use this website to enhance their curriculum.  

Summary and Connection
The first step of technology is to become information literate, which means students are able to use information as needed and locate and evaluate it effectively. This does not happen in one night, even as teachers, we are learning about technology to this day. In the future, students should be able to access and assess information correctly so they can use it in their work. Search engines and keywords allow students to find what they are looking for without having to search on every page. Also, when looking at websites, teachers should be able to guide students on what is reliable and what is not a good place to be finding their information. I want to become information literate so that my students do not have to suffer from plagiarism, getting bad grades, or using information that is not valid. This chapter taught me how further my knowledge on how to evaluate a website. There are no shortcuts when it comes to writing good papers, so cheating or using false information will get me nowhere.

References
Maloy, R. W., Verock-O, R. E., Edwards, S. A., & Woolf, B. P. (2010).Transforming learning with 
          new technologies. Allyn & Bacon.