Mission 1: How to Get in A Whole Lot of Trouble (resources) (worksheet)

Your first mission is to use the resources to answer the following questions. You must use at least TWO of the sites listed in the resource list. Write out the answers on your worksheet.

1. What is "plagiarism?"

2. What is "copyright?"

3. What is "copyright infringement?"

4. What is "fair use?"

5. What is a "source?"

6. What does it mean to "cite your sources?"

7. What is a "bibliography?"

8. What is "collusion," and is it plagiarism?

9. What does it mean to "paraphrase?"

10. What is "academic integrity?"

Mission 2: How to Avoid the Slammer (resources) (worksheet)

In your second mission, you will learn how to paraphrase and quote so you don't end up in major trouble.

Sharpen your pencil or check your ink, and get a clipboard. This one takes a lot of writing.

1. Choose one of the "Info Pages" and find one paragraph of interesting information. Copy it by hand onto the worksheet. Here is my sample paragraph:

Most agree that Sequoyah was born sometime in the 1770s in the Tsalagi village of Tuskegee on the Tennessee. His mother, Wurerth, belonged to the Paint Clan. Some argue that Sequoyah's father was a white man from Virgina named Nathaniel Gist (sometimes rendered "Guess"). Sequoyah is sometimes referred to as George Guess or George Gist.

2. Let's assume that you are writing a paper on this topic and you want to use an idea from the paragraph you copied. First, decide which idea you want to use in your own work. In my example I decide that I need to use the information about where and when Sequoyah was born.

3. Identify the part of the paragraph with the information you need, and underline it. For example:

Most agree that Sequoyah was born sometime in the 1770s in the Tsalagi village of Tuskegee on the Tennessee. His mother, Wurerth, belonged to the Paint Clan. Some argue that Sequoyah's father was a white man from Virgina named Nathaniel Gist (sometimes rendered "Guess"). Sequoyah is sometimes referred to as George Guess or George Gist.

4. Now you must paraphrase the part that you underlined. To do this, you must completely change it into your own words. You have to be very careful when you do this. You can't just change two or three words and be done. That is still plagiarism. For example:

This is the original sentence that I underlined:

Most agree that Sequoyah was born sometime in the 1770s in the Tsalagi village of Tuskegee on the Tennessee.

This is a new version, but it is not changed enough. I only changed a few words:

Most people agree that Sequoyah was born at some point in the 1770s in the Tsalagi village of Tuskegee, which is on the Tennessee River.

This one is also still plagiarism. All I did was take a couple of things out:

Sequoyah was born in the 1770s in the village of Tuskegee on the Tennessee.

This last one has been changed enough so it is no longer plagiarism:

Sequoyah was born in the Tennesse village of Tuskegee, probably in the mid-1770s.

Now paraphrase the sentence you chose so it is completely in your own words.

5. Quoting is easier. There are two kinds of quotes: short and long. With short quotes, you just take all or part of a sentence and put it inside quotation marks. The catch is that you must somehow tell the reader where you got the quote. For this project we will use parenthetical citations. Here's how.

Go back to the paragraph you just used for paraphrasing (or pick another). Choose another small part of it. For my example I'll use the sentence I used above.

Most agree that Sequoyah was born sometime in the 1770s in the Tsalagi village of Tuskegee on the Tennessee.

Suppose I want to use part of this line in a sentence of my own. There are two ways to do this. The first way is to incorporate the source into the new sentence. Notice how I tell the reader where I got the quotation.

According to Leo Galleguillos, Sequoyah came into the world "sometime in the 1770s" (online).

Look closely at the parts in red. In the above example I just made the source (Leo Galleguillos) part of the sentence, and then I put quotation marks around the part I borrowed. Then I put the word "online" in parenthesis. (If I used this in a real paper, I would have a bibliography that listed exactly where on the internet this source is located.) Now take the sentence you have chosen and quote part of it this way. And remember the phrase "according to," because you'll be using a lot in the future!

There is another way to do this. You can use a parenthetical citation. To do it, you just put the source information in parenthesis at the end of the sentence. Here is my example:

Sequoyah came into the world "sometime in the 1770s" (Galleguillos, online).

Look very carefully at where the quotation marks, parenthesis, and period are in the above example. You need to do it exactly the same way. Do it now with the sentence you chose.

6. Now you will make a long quote. This is the easiest one of all -- but if you do it wrong on a paper, your teacher will eat you alive. All you do in a long quote is put the quote inside your paper, indented from the rest and single-spaced. Then you put a parenthetical citation afterward. The catch is that the sentences before and after the long quote must relate to the quote itself. Here is a completed example:

Sequoyah was a very important person in American history. He did a lot of really great things to help white men get along better with Native Americans. He had humble beginnings: Most agree that Sequoyah was born sometime in the 1770s in the Tsalagi village of Tuskegee on the Tennessee. His mother, Wurerth, belonged to the Paint Clan. Some argue that Sequoyah's father was a white man from Virgina named Nathaniel Gist (sometimes rendered "Guess"). Sequoyah is sometimes referred to as George Guess or George Gist. (Galleguillos, online) As Sequoyah grew older, he began to realized how much the world was being changed by the white man...

Three things to remember with this kind of quotation: (1) it must be indented, (2) it must be single-spaced, and (3) don't bother using 10 of these in a 2-page paper just to make it look longer. It won't work. Now take your sample paragraph and make it into a long quote, with sentences before and after. Don't forget the citation at the end of the quote!

Mission 3: How Not to Get Hunted Down by the Copyright Police (resources) (worksheet)

In this mission you will make a bibligraphy. A bibliography is simply a list of sources that a person used to write a paper. Normally you would do this after writing a paper, but you don't have to write one this time. We'll just pretend we already wrote our papers.

1. Suppose I write a paper called "Bill Gates: Why, God, Why?" I used a whole bunch of different sources for my paper. At the end, I need to make a bibliography that tells what those sources were. Otherwise, I am plagiarizing. Yes, even if you paraphrase and put everything in your own words, if you don't list all your sources, you're still plagiarizing.

Choose one of the topics on the resource page. Each one has a list a list of 5 pages. Go to each page and use your worksheet to fill in the information about each webpage. (For a real paper, these are places you might have found while searching the internet for information.)

2. In a bibliography, you make a list of all the site information you just wrote down. But you can't just scribble the information down and be done with it. You have to format it the right way. Guess what? This time I'm not going to tell you how. You'll have to find that out yourself. Check out the resources to get the info you need, and then turn your list of resources into a neatly typed, printed-out bibliography.

Mission 4: Don't Do What These People Did (resources)

You have learned how to do it right -- now learn how some people did it wrong. In this mission you'll look at some real-life examples of plagiarism and copyright infringement, and see what happens when people don't follow the rules. These are people who screwed up big-time, and now they're paying the price. You'll also see how teachers are getting new tools to fight agains students who "copy and paste."

1. Read each of the cases and stories listed in the resources.

2. Do you think plagiarism is worth it? Why or why not? Tell me your thoughts in at least 200 words. It needs to be typed and printed out.

Mission 5: Your Personal Statement of Academic Integrity (sample)

In this last mission you will write a Statement of Academic Integrity. I want you to put some serious thought into this. It is going to be a contract that you sign and follow.

1. You have already seen some of the consequences that people have to face when caught plagiarizing. Still, "because I'll get in trouble" is not the only reason to avoid doing something. Think about some other reasons plagiarism is a bad idea. Look at some of these resources to get ideas.

2. Type, print and sign your own Statement of Academic Integrity. Look here for a sample that I made for myself. Yours can follow the same format, but remember what you've learned in this WebQuest about copying the work of others. Make it unique. Make it yours. Make it mean something to you personally.

I'm Done!

Before you pass anything in, check your work by reading the Evaluation section. It tells you how you will be graded.