onsdag 23. mars 2011

Ethics



One must always remember that info, articles, texts, etc., located on the Internet is gathered or written by another person. It's not like that "internet" has created the text. Bottom line is there anyone who has copyright info and copyright on the Internet you can read about here. Is it stand out for me as a user of the Internet to use the free texts for various purposes? Absolutely not, and an example of what you see here. Here we see that there is a growing problem that students use information from the internet, and claiming they even wrote the text. But we also see in the article that there are systems to detect this type of cheating. And good is it, for it is not very fun to "compete" with others on an exam if they cheat. In addition, it's s absolutely not ethically justifiable to cheat on exams in this way. Not that it is ethically justifiable to cheat on the exam in any other way either then.
 Here's a video with a slightly interesting perspective on exam cheating, and a way to prevent this. 


But as it is said in the video, this is ethically acceptable when?

IKT and computers are more and more used in school today.
This raises some new challenges for the teachers.
How do we educate our pupils in using these tools? Are the pupils aware of the rules when it comes down to plagiarism? They are not.


 
The pros for this is all the pupils which frequently use the copy and paste function when they do their schoolwork, without thinking about if this is legal or not.
The cons are of course the pupils that prefer to write in their own words, rather than use copy and paste when they do their schoolwork.
It seems that some of the pupils think or believe that all the information on the internet  is "free" to use in whatever way they want, and a few of them do so.
 On the other hand, most of the pupils are aware that copying whole stories and presenting them as their own work is wrong, and they prefer to write their own stories instead.
As a teacher it is our responsibility to educate them in the rules and laws when it comes to copying, and plagiarism.
So that they are aware which rules to follow, and the consequences if they dont. Making sure that all pupils know the rules and laws concerning this issue is a good way to minimize plagiarism in school today.
Another challenge is how to know, or find out if a pupil has cheated and copied a story from the internet instead of writing it himself. 
There is some software available to check out this. It will probably have a preventive effect if we as teachers show the pupils that there are good tools easily available to reveal those pupils who cheat in this way.



Have any thoughts around this?







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