"Cybercheating"

I think the topic of "cybercheating" is really interesting. With the popularity of the Internet you can google a topic and find an abundance of information, which is awesome, but this also leads to more sources to plagiarize from (and some students think they are less likely to get caught than out of a book).  There are also several websites that you can buy entire papers from.  Now students can more easily buy papers and plagiarize work in a completely different dimension than they could ten years ago. This also makes a teachers job grading papers more difficult.  Teachers must critically evaluate all of their students' work and decide if it's authentic.  Luckily, as websites have emerged to buy papers about popular topics, so have websites to help teachers catch cybercheaters.  I found this website which has a lot of links about plagiarism as well as links to free plagiarism catching websites: http://www.ncusd203.org/central/html/where/plagiarism_stoppers.html.

Since I teach 2nd grade cybercheating isn't a major concern that I have, but I know it's something I need to prepare my students for so that they do not one day copy someone else's work.  We've been working on reading facts, in books and from websites, and putting them into our own words.  The students also get with their writing buddy to read each other's non-fiction writing and evaluate if it sounds like something their partner would say.  It seems a little young to talk about plagiarizing, but I think it will make them more competent writers and more critical of things that they read.