Plagiarism Activity

As we begin work on our Supreme Court Analysis Papers, we are going to start by learning more about plagiarism.

1. First go to this website: http://library.acadiau.ca/tutorials/plagiarism/ Be sure to click on the red boxes to answer the questions on find out more information.
2. Next check out this PowerPoint on plagiarism. http://www.lycoming.edu/library/instruction/tutorials/plagiarism.aspx
3. Now go to this site http://www.lycoming.edu/library/instruction/tutorials/plagiarismGame.aspxand play the game. When you finish, take a screen shot. Paste it in Word and under the picture tell me 5 things you learned about plagiarism today. This will be graded. If you do not know how to take a screenshot, there are directions on the Dropbox site, called, “to save a screenshot” in the AP Gov folder. Also directions on http://take-a-screenshot.org/
4. Finally upload the document from Word with your screenshot and 5 things you learned onto dropbox. Directions for uploading on dropbox can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/help/90/en (scroll down for the on the website directions).

Go to www.dropbox.com

Username: cgdelong@bedford.k12.va.us
Password: ilovegov
Folder: AP Gov, then Plagiarism Activity

Afterwards, you can research court cases. Narrow down to the ones you are interested in. You could start here: http://www.streetlaw.org/en/Landmark/Cases

Researching Skills

We discussed in class today the importance of good research skills. Researching well will help you write a better paper. Hopefully we now know more about plagiarism and understand how to properly cite and paraphrase sources.

Remember the importance of evaluating websites. Look for:

• a bibliography
• author
• a credible source (like a university)
• keep in mind when it was last updated

We also discussed academic vs. non-academic sources. Academic sources are things like journals that have been peer-reviewed. While Wikipedia can be a good starting point, keep in mind it is open-source and should not be used in your paper. Go to the original source for information. Here are a couple of sources for finding journal articles: http://www.doaj.org/ and http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/dean/peer_reviewed.htm You can also go on the library wiki site http://libertyhslibrary.wikispaces.com/Before+you+go+a-Googlen%27 and try the Gale search engine, specifically the Criminal Justice one. And maybe one of your best discoveries today for this paper, Google Scholar.

Remember to keep a list of your sources linked to your notes. General formatting guidelines for APA can be found here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ Remember that Word can do citations and keep a bibliography for you. If you don't have Word on your computer, OpenOffice is an open-source free word processing program.