My son has diorama due today. He worked on it last week. He is depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence....in legos.
His research consisted of printing out the wikipedia entry on the event.
He wanted to post that on his project. I told him that research means looking up the information and then writing about what you want to say in your own words. Printing out the article and stapling it to your project is taking credit for another person's work. I told him he cannot plagiarize. He was quite mad for a while, but when faced with the prospect of a indefinite restriction he relented and wrote his own version. :-)
It makes me feel like a drug pusher in a way. I give him some freedom. He takes it, does lots of things with his friends, he wants more, gets hooked...and then when he is out of line I take it away. He gets mad, goes into withdrawal, gets desperate, then does anything to get it back....
Nice analogy! *LAUGH* I've often thought that being a drug addict would make my teaching job more bearable, and you've just proved it--I'm already apparently surrounded by small addicts!
ReplyDelete--Jamie