An Opportunity to Teach Students About Plagiarism and Paraphrasing

By now we are all familiar with the "similarities" between Melania Trump's speech (2016) and Michelle Obama's speech in 2008. Looking at them side by side, it is quite apparent that the speechwriter (I use that term loosely) took big chunks of the 2008 speech and pasted them into the speech given by Mrs. Trump at the Republican National Convention. Take a look:






Putting the words side by side:

When I taught my students about plagiarism, an important element was a discussion on paraphrasing. Most students are not aware exactly what paraphrasing is, and some are satisfied to replace a word here or there in a sentence, thinking they are making it their own. Even when paraphrasing, a citation MUST be written, because the original idea is not yours.

EasyBib has some excellent videos which talk about plagiarism and paraphrasing. I always show my students these two videos. (The female voice on the second one is a bit odd, but the information is great.) This recent event is the perfect opportunity to show students the right way to do research.

14 Plagiarism Detectors to Check on Your Students

Dupli Checker- FREE

Grammarly- "Grammarly is an automated proofreader and plagiarism checker. It corrects up to 10 times as many mistakes as other word processors". $$

Noplag- FREE

Paper Rater- free and $$ accounts

The Plagiarism Checker- free and $$ accounts

Plagiarism Checker.com- FREE

Plagiarism Detector- paste the file or upload; FREE

PlagiarismSearch.com- free check

Plagiarisma- FREE

Plagium- free and $$ accounts

Plagscan- FREE; upload or paste

Quetext- only copy and paste; no uploading of files

Unplag- paste text or upload your file

Viper Plagiarism Scanner- Windows only; requires download

Amazing! 74 Infographics for Teacher-Librarians (L.A. Teachers Too!)

When your budget is low on dollars, you need to become creative when it comes to everything in your school library. Since we have a computer lab in our library-media center, (and lots of wall space...) I have decorated the lab with posters and infographics. You might have seen some of my original work, including 7 Things to Know About EBSCO, and the READ poster. There are also many posters which help students format their research paper, search for Google images, and understanding search results. When I began this search I never expected to find so many infographics for school librarians! If you are a language arts teacher, you will also find many related to grammar and reading below.

SCHOOL LIBRARIANS
27 Things Your Teacher-Librarian Does

29 Ways to Stay Creative

ABCs of Information Literacy

All Digital Citizens

America's 100 Largest Libraries 

Anatomy of a Librarian 

The Aroma of Books

At-A-Glance Comic Tutorials- from the wonderful Daring Librarian

The Benefits of Reading Books

Books VS eBooks 

Books Make a Difference in Kids' Lives: The Haves and the Have Nots

Bookworms

Bye-Bye Textbooks: How Digital Devices Are Reshaping Education

Classification Chart: Readers

Components of a 21st Century Classroom

Creative Commons Infographic

eBooks: The Greener Choice 

The Evolution of the Book 

The Evolution of Classroom Technology 

Evolution of the Noble Librarian  

The Evolution of Story Telling 

The Evolution of Typography

Finding Online Images

Formatting Your Research Paper

A General Guide to Understanding Plagiarism- EASYBIB

Google Search Genius

Guide for Your Research Paper

The History of e-Mail

The History of Science Fiction 

A History of Typography 

How Google Works  

How to Easily Archive and Embed Tweets Using Search Hash & Google Drive- Daring Librarian

The Influential Power of Print

Is Print Dead? 

A Librarian's Worth Around the World

Library of Congress By Numbers

The Literary Crisis and Kids in America

Most Targeted Books

Myth #4: Librarians Have a Lot of Time to Read

On the Road to Reading

Plagiarism: A Visual Guide

The Power of Reading to Your Children

The Power of Stories and Reading to Spark Children's Potential

Press Facts 

Progression of the eBook Reader

Publishing in the Digital Era

Questions a Critical Thinker Asks

Reading Like a Sleuth

The Rise of eReading

Students Like Social Media

Three Types of Copyright

U.S. Public Libraries at Risk 

A Visual Summary of Harry Potter 

What Does EasyBib Do?

What Makes Good Information Design? 

You Want to Know About Copyright

LANGUAGE ARTS
10 Do's and Don'ts for Effective Vocabulary Instruction

10 Hyphenation Tips

10 Step Book Report

11 Rules: How and When to Use a Period

12 Most Misunderstood Words in English

15 Most Useful Phrasal Verbs

The 15 Punctuation Marks

21 Rules: How and When to Use a Comma

40 Years of E-books 

Apostrophes: The Importance of Good Grammar

The Most Annoying Writing Mistakes

Passive and Non-Aggressive Voices

Past Tense 101

Prepositions

The Top 10 List of Mark Twain's Popular Quotes

Troublesome Words

The Writing Process

You Should Read This Before You Write That

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Website Evaluation: Resources

Checklist for Evaluating Web Resources

Credible Sources Count- view a 10-minute tutorial about how to find sites you can trust. EXCELLENT!

Critical Evaluation of Information- Kathy Schrock's guide by grade level; covers elementary through secondary 

Evaluating Internet-Based Information- from Media Smarts

Finding Reliable Information Online- slide presentation from middle school teacher Sean Hinger

The Five Ws of Website Evaluation- from Kathy Schrock

Museum of Hoaxes- bogus web sites from A to Z

University of Berkeley Library- an excellent tutorial on finding information on the Internet

Website Evaluation- I have put together three important links for your students