So, What Is plagiarism?  Most schools define it along the lines of submitting work that someone else created as your own.   This could be as minor as using someone else's idea(s) in your paper without citing them.   It could also be as EXTREME as turning in a paper you downloaded off the Internet. Why do students plagiarize? Are they lazy? Yes! Are they procrastinators? Yes! Are they evil kids who don't want to work? No!!! Anyone who takes the time to get out of bed and go to class every morning of their own free will is willing to work.  So why do they do it?  Well, lets see what goes through the mind of a typical plagiarist.  It's 2am.  My paper is due tomorrow and I haven't even started!!!  I don't want to fail this class.  Maybe I'll just plagiarize and hope for the best. How can teachers prevent plagiarism?  Is it as simple as shutting down all of the Free Essay sites on the Internet?  Well, any "teacher" that believes that is a fool.  If anything having Free Essay sites only makes it harder to plagiarize.  Everyone has heard of the file cabinets full of old essays in the Frat House.  My favorite is the good old… Just copy straight out of the Encyclopedia one.  Do you think 99% of teachers would know if you copied straight out of an encyclopedia?  I highly doubt it!  If you turn in a paper you find on an essay site you are a complete moron and deserve what you get.  All a teacher has to do is pull out one sentence from the essay you turned in and paste it into Google, and you are toast.  So what should they do to prevent plagiarism?  It can be as simple as 4 little steps.  Lets say the paper is due in 4 weeks. Week 1: Ask for a topic Week 2: Ask for an outline Week 3: Ask for a rough draft Week 4: Final Paper is due What would these 4 steps accomplish?  No student wants to plagiarize, 99% of the time when they do, it's the old… My paper is due in 3 hours now what.  So what do these steps do? They keep students from only having 3 hours to write their paper.  The teachers don't even have to look at the first 3 steps.  They just have to let the students turn them in. Why don't teachers follow these 4 quick and easy steps?  Are They overworked?  Perhaps, but how long does it take them to have the students place the papers on their desk?  5 seconds?  10 seconds?  So perhaps before a teacher gets on the band wagon of, "Lets kill the evil Free Essay Sites", they can help students not get into a situation where they think plagiarizing is their only choice.  Maybe they can look inward and help students not be procrastinators. How does someone use a Free Essay site to do research?  Well how do you use a book to do research?  How do you use a news paper?  The only difference is, essay sites not only provide students with research, but they also help students with the flow of the paper.  I think one of the biggest problems students have writing a paper is getting started.  Well, by reading 3 or 4 papers on a given topic, they start to understand how other students have written papers.  They can then hopefully take the information they have found here, or in newspapers, or in books and write their own. Questions or Comments about this?  Email me!  I love to listen to uninformed teachers tell me how I'm corrupting the moral fiber of our youth.  If you are going to do this, please at least make it interesting. If you have something constructive to say, I'd love to here from you too.

Google - Simply do a search with any sentence found in a paper.

Yahoo - Simply do a search with any sentence found in a paper.

Plagiarism.org - Uninformed teachers who don't know how to use google

Plagiarism.com - Uninformed teachers who don't know how to use google