My wife is a seventh grade science teacher. One of the many difficulties she has to deal with, especially on large written projects is student plagiarism. The Internet is just too tempting for some students to avoid. Here they have searched and found the perfect article that answers all the questions that the project asks of them. Why not just print it out and turn it in??
Fortunately for seventh graders, school does not expell kids for plagiarism, they simply have to do the project over again or take a zero on the assignment. Unfortunately for the students, their plagiarism is typically very easy to spot. Not many 12 year olds can typically write at the same level of a college graduate (who would typically be publishing papers on scientists, or science topics). This makes locating sources of plagiarism very easy to locate.
How?
Take the typical class project, a report on a famous scientist and pull segments of phrases that the student used.
Take for example this segment:
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning rod, the harmonica, the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, and the flexible urinary catheter. Although Franklin never patented any of his own inventions, he was a supporter of the rights of inventors and authors and was responsible for inserting into the United States Constitution the provision for limited-term patents and copyrights. My source..
When reading a paragraph like this on a student's report, a red flag often goes up when they use phrases like Franklin was a prodigious inventor or uses words like "among" or "although". (If not plagiarisd, it is likely Mom or Dad wrote it.)
Using Google
In the search field of Google, I do an explicit search for the scientist's name.
"Benjamin Franklin"
13,400,000 hits Here
Now, I try by adding a phrase from their assignment.
"Benjamin Franklin" "Franklin was a prodigious inventor."
15 hits - 5 shown Here
From here, 5 sources are not that difficult to follow-up on. Typically, you can find the student's source within a few hits. Print out their source, staple it to the assignment, then mark it with a 0! OOOO What fun!!
