To make it Google-proof, make it personal

The principal sin of plagiarism is not ethical, but cognitive.
Brad Hokanson, U of Minnesota

The program for this year's ISTE had a few sessions with "Google-proofing" in the title. Since, I suppose no one copies directly from print sources anymore, "Googling" and "plagiarizing" are synonymous. And as professor Hokanson suggests in the quote above, when there is a direct transfer of information from source to student product - with no cognitive processing stop in-between - little learning occurs as a result of the assignment. It is busy work that no one likes.

Reducing the probability of plagiarism has been an interest of mine for some time. (See Copy, Paste, Plagiarize, 1997, The Other Side of Plagiarism, 2004, and Plagiarism-Proofing Assignments, 2004). And I have long argued that developing better research and test questions, rather than using Turnitin or other "gotcha" types of technologies, is the best long-term solution to plagiarism. And at the heart of most "better" assignments and assessments is attention to higher-order thinking skills that require original thinking rather than simple recall or reporting of content. The graphic below, one of many, many similar graphs and charts, matches Bloom's Taxonomy to verbs that help create better assignments:

Source

But I don't think just attending to HOTS is sufficient. Assignments and assessments need to be personal as well. Engagement, creativity, and meaning result when the outcome of a project are in some way related to oneself and to those people, places and things one cares about. But what makes an assignment personal? I would suggest four primary means:

1. Allow (or require) the student to relate the academic topic to an area of personal interest. If the assignment is to do research on WWII and the student has a personal interest in horses, have the research question be "How were horses used in WWII battles?" 

2. Allow (or require) the student to do inquiry that has implications for him/herself or his/her family. Rather than research a topic about an assigned health issue, ask the student to select a health problem that may be experienced in his/her own family or by someone he or she is close to.

3. Allow (or require) the student to give local focus to the research. Rather than simply studying bats, for example, ask that the student focuses on bats that are local and determine the ecological impact of the region.

4. Allow (or require) that the student's final product relate to a current, real-world problem. If the topic is genetics, ask that the result of the paper be a recommendation of how advances in genetic modification might solve a real problem in the news - hunger, disease, over-population, etc. 

None of this is exactly rocket-surgery, but it is a fundamental way of re-thinking the purpose of research (to find real solutions to real problems or to explore topics that are meaningful to the researcher) as well as a natural means of reducing the chance of plagiarism.

Your suggestions for Google-proofing an assignment?

School libraries - a student right

Here's a little riff on ALA President Barbara Stripling's Declaration for the Right to Libraries...

Declaration of Students' Rights to School Libraries

All students have the right to a well-staffed, well-stocked, and up-to-date physical and virtual school library that..

1. Provides access to materials on a wide range of topics, expressing a wide range of viewpoints, with a wide range of reading levels, and in a wide-range of media formats.
2. Provides access to a curated collection of online materials, as well as Internet access in as unrestricted an environment as possible.
3. Provides novels, non-fiction, magazines, games, videos, and other materials of high interest for practice reading and recreational use.
4. Provides access to professional information experts who teach information seeking, evaluation, and communication skills.
5. Provides a physical environment in which every student feels welcome, comfortable, and safe.
6. Provides access to the tools needed to communicate and share self-created information in a range of media with peers and with the world.
7. Provides encouragement to explore topics of personal interest and make learning an enjoyable, voluntary, life-long enterprise.
8. Provides a social physical space for face-to-face group work for all students.
9. Provides access to resources, spaces, and staff outside the regular school day.
10. Supports an education philosophy of problem-solving, creativity, authentic assessment, attention to dispositions, and personalization.

 OK, those are the top ten off the top of my head. Yours, fellow librarians?

AASL, I happily cede the right to this concept to you. 

Check out the very nice graphic of this done by LibraryGirl, Jennifer LaGuarde!

Libraries - a human right

American Library Association President (and long-time friend), Barbara Stripling recently released this interesting document: 

Public libraries, in their own way, have always been a radical, democratic concept. Allowing everyone, rich or poor, the opportunity to learn, to access diverse opinions, and to engage with experts in information sounds like a formula for social disorder. Happy Independence Day.

Go Barbara! 

But here is what I am thinking - don't students and teachers deserve a Bill of Rights to a School Library created specially for them? 

Stay tuned...