How Do High School Students “Justify” Internet Plagiarism?
The Internet has become the research tool of choice for all students from elementary school through postgraduate programs. (Pew 2001) Indeed, it is quite possible that most students now lack a fundamental knowledge of library based research methods, Congressional numbering or even the Dewey Decimal system. Use of these conventions of library science has been supplanted by the innovation of web based search engines like Google.com. Students no longer riffle through long drawers of index cards to find resources; or even run searches against databases on CD or tape. Rather, students are now able to instantaneously access millions upon millions of “resources” with a few keystrokes and a click. This type of research, while haphazard, may in some cases be perfectly appropriate and ultimately helpful in completing an assignment. The overwhelming accessibility of written work- at one time it was unimaginable that millions of documents on a single subject matter could be accessed in less than o
