The internet....death of the well written paper

Well, I asked the Juniors and Seniors to write short summary papers about African American Scientists. Their summaries only had to be three paragraphs long and could be fairly short. I did this little project in celebration of Black History Month.

Well, in my first class of 24- I found 4 plagiarized papers, directly copied and pasted off the internet. They didn't write anything themselves! Just copied off a website and put it on their paper.

The next class of 19 had three plagiarized papers. I am currently grading the last period's papers and the first five have all been plagiarized. Again, directly copied and pasted off the internet. No rewording or font changes. Just the exact same article from About.com Also, what's more bothersome is that some kids have identical papers because they plagiarized about the same scientist.

It's a disappointing to read all of these papers and see that none of them could even summarize three paragraphs!! Three paragraphs. I have currently written more than three paragraphs right here on this blog and it took less then 5 minutes. They had an entire class period!

Most of them while writing papers complained about how it was unfair of me to ask them to summarize a website. Summarize a website??!! Oh sorry, next time I won't ask you to work.

Other than this, my day is going great! I am so happy that spring is here! The weather is great! School is going very well and I am actually not even that bothered by the plagiarism! They're getting zeros on their papers, they're going to have to write essays about why it is wrong to plagiarize, and I am sending a letter home to their parents.

muha ha hah ha ha.

Aren't you glad that YOU didn't plagiarize in my class??

You