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How to use PowerPoint for your presentations

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How to use PowerPoint for your presentations

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Microsoft PowerPoint Tutorial - Beginners Level 1

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2018 AASL Framework for Learners Standard

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2018 AASL Framework for Learners Standard

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Learners A. 6. 3=Learners follow ethical and legal guidelines for gathering and using information by: Evaluating information for accuracy, validity, social and cultural context, and appropriateness for need.

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Our school library website

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You can do research here.

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Who's Snooping on You Online? | Above the Noise | PBS LearningMedia

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With recent reports of high profile data breaches, ransomware attacks and the prevalence of online trackers -- it's hard to know how best to protect your privacy online. In this Above the Noise video we met up with the cybersecurity experts at Electronic Frontier Foundation to learn more about who's snooping on us online and what we can do to protect ourselves.

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DISCUSSION QUESTION:  How can you tell if a website is useful for research?

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DISCUSSION QUESTION:  How can you tell if a website is useful for research?

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What about fake news?

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Table of Contents

Part 1: The Need to Evaluate Internet Resources
Part 2: Evaluating Online Resources
Part 3: Checklist on Evaluating Online Resources
Part 4: Improve Your Evaluation Skills
Part 5: Content Issues: Plagiarism, Copyright and Accessibility

Why Do We Need to Evaluate Online Resources?

Everyone and anyone can create content online. Today, it's hard to determine whether an internet resource you find is authentic or not.
Evaluating online resources is an important step in any research process. Identifying trustworthy content should be part of your research journey.
If you're looking for factual resources, search through newspaper publications, TV news, journals, official pamphlets, books, and magazines. But, nowadays people opt to search for information on the Internet. They tend to believe anything posted on the Internet without even checking for credibility.

Satire and fake news sites publish erroneous data; people believe these sites because of its persuasive, believable nature. If you're looking for a credible resource, you should avoid hoax sites as this may affect the veracity of your study.

Meanwhile, many content publishers rely heavily on copying content and owning those as theirs to get decent followership. Duplicating content and passing it as if it is their own content is copyright infringement or plagiarism.

In this guide, we will help you improve your knowledge and skill in evaluating online resources. We will guide you on how to check a resource for authenticity and credibility.

Moreover, we will discuss skills that you will need to assess a resource such as speed reading and skimming. As an evaluator, you should be familiar with the different citation and referencing styles. Also, we will review several content issues like plagiarized content, DMCA, and copyrights, and web content accessibility.

Evaluating Online Resources

There are several aspects that you should look for in evaluating online resources. You should check:

who published the content (Authorship),

where was it published (Publication),

when was it published (Currency and Relevance),

the truthfulness and integrity of the facts (Accuracy),

how it is written and presented (Purpose and Objectivity),

and what references are cited within the article (Links)

Authorship

The author of the content is a concern when considering the eligibility of the content. First of all, the author should be an expert in the subject discussed in the article. He should have the credentials to back up his knowledge of the subject matter.

Usually, the information about the author can be found on the website along with the content. The name of the author can be found below the title, on the side of the article, or at the bottom. Sometimes, more information on the author is found below the article, also known as an author bio. An author may be credibility if he is oftentimes mentioned in other authoritative websites.

But, it is not easy to verify an author's background through the Internet. Website articles and resources rarely have fact-checkers or editors for copyediting an article. Another thing to consider is that authors vary in tone and purpose. Some do it for their personal blog. Other authors are advocates of a cause, while others do it for marketing their product or service.

Publication

If the information about the author is not present, the publisher of the resource article can be checked for authority.

Take a quick look on the website. Are you familiar with the publication name? Is the publisher reputable and credible on the subject matter? Look at the website name, its logo, the URL of the website, and other indicators that can prove its reliability on the topic. One quick look at the URL can help you determine if it's a reliable source or not. Trustworthy websites end in .org, .edu, .gov, or any recognizable web address.

Another way to check the publisher's site is via its About Us and Contact Us page. These pages will contain information about the publisher. You can countercheck their details by conducting another search.

Reliable websites publish content that is relevant or under the same scope as the resource page that you found. Check how often do they publish content and if they published related content as well. News and publication websites (NYTimes, BBC, The Washington Post, TIME, etc.), are authority sites for facts. Consider the resource's credibility if the publisher has mentioned or been mentioned by authority sites.

Currency and Relevance

In conducting a research, the currency and timeliness of data are important in making inferences for data gathering and analyses.

David Loshin, President of Knowledge Integrity, is a well-known thought leader in data quality and management. He has defined the difference between currency and timeliness when it comes to data:

"Currency," Loshin explained, "refers to the degree to which data is current with the world that it models. Currency can measure how up-to-date data is, and whether it is correct despite the possibility of modifications or changes that impact time and date values. Currency rules may be defined to assert limits to the lifetime of a data value, indicating that it needs to be checked and possibly refreshed."

On the other hand, timeliness refers to the time expectation for the accessibility of data. Timeliness can be measured as the time between when data is expected and when it is readily available for use."

Information changes throughout the years. On the Internet, it's easy to get lost among the billions of data available at your fingertips. Even academic articles such as theses and investigative reports can have obsolete data. Out-of-date content has information that is not relevant or applicable in today's time. How can you determine if the content that you're looking at isn't outdated? How do you check if the data you have is current and timely?

Look for the date of publication. Oftentimes, it is located near the title of the resource. You can look for the date at the side information of the article, and even at the end of the article.

Currency is a modern issue; some websites update their articles to adapt to the modern world. Data does not become obsolete, but you need to check its relevancy to the current times. For updated content, look for the date of publication and the date when it was recently changed and updated.

Here's an example from Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL):

The American Psychological Association (APA) is used as a citation style in academic and scholarly articles for social sciences. Since it started in 1929, the APA style has changed over the years and it is on its 6th edition.

With that said, updated resources oftentimes tag relevant statistical data with proper citations and referencing. Aside from that, these resources mention other resource and link back to them, regularly updating any link references should they find that those links are obsolete.

Accuracy

In writing, accuracy refers to a writer's correctness in using the language system. This means that the writer's use of grammar and vocabulary should be correct and as good as it could be.

Minimal errors are virtually present in all kinds of publication, but poor spelling and grammar can easily reflect how careless an author is, and this may result to distrust. Again, web resources are prone to technical errors since not all web publications go under the scrutinizing eye of a copy editor.

Online resources can be verified easily through a quick search on the Internet. Other resources provide a reference list that can help in double-checking facts cited within the article.

Purpose and Objectivity

An online resource clearly serves its purpose  it should teach, inform, explain, or persuade. By reading the article, it should become evident what the article aims to impart to its readers. The author should not be biased with his views reflected in the article, unless stated otherwise. You should comprehend whether the content is backed up with facts or based on opinion and propaganda. The content should show its intended audience.

Links

Links are used to cite and credit references found in other websites. During evaluation, links on the content are useful and relevant to the topic of the content. On the other hand, links on the content should proceed to an existing web page. In any case that the links within the content proceed to a 404 page or "Not Found", the content may be outdated, thus may be unreliable for new information.

Checklist on Evaluating Websites

We'll help you assess online resources easier with this concise infographic checklist brought to you by Hosting Facts:

Improve Your Evaluation Skills

Effective evaluation of online materials requires a set of skills. To effectively evaluate online materials, you must be able to do proper speed reading and skimming of content, as well as citing of references. Possessing these skills will give you the ability to objectively and successfully critique online materials. Let's discuss in detail how these skills can help you in evaluating content.

Speed Reading and Skimming

Before you will be able to evaluate any material, you will have to read it first. Going through the whole thing, even up to every punctuation mark, can eat up your time. Reading entire materials will not be practical especially if you have a lot of materials piled up. Therefore, it is vital that you possess speed-reading and skimming skills.

The average reader can run through approximately 200 words per minute. A good reader can reach 400 to 500 without sacrificing comprehension of what he had just read. Any more than 500 words risk losing comprehension so going beyond that is not advisable. We shall then consider those who can read at least 400 words a minute as a speed reader. It is, however, crucial that comprehension is maintained as there is no point in being able to finish a material quickly if you were not able to pick up anything from it. Speed reading is therefore a fast-paced manner of reading that retains understating of the material.

There are two speed reading techniques: scanning and skimming. Scanning is a very quick running through of the material in an attempt to find a specific piece of information. If you pass through an article very quickly in search for a name, a date, an amount, or the likes, what you are doing is scanning. Skimming, on the other hand, is rapid reading that goals to get the main ideas contained in the material in an effort to get the general overview of the content. Skimming is then considerably slower the scanning.

In trying to evaluate online materials, what you would most likely do is to skim through them. Unless, of course, if you're trying to look for a specific information that you are trying to verify. Skimming through an article allows you to quickly complete a material without losing its essence.

Skim effectively and finish a lot of materials with less time. Always remember than comprehension must never be sacrificed for speed. Speed reading is a total waste of time if you did not understand what you have just read.

Citation and Referencing Styles

In order to check the validity of the facts stated on an online material, references must be presented so that you can verify them. It is the responsibility of the author of the material to include citations and references in a way that follow standard referencing styles, but as the evaluator, you must also be aware of how to do this so that you can use it as criteria in critiquing the said material.

First of all, have a check on the references of the material. Make sure that these are credible resources. A lot of satirical sites and content are available on the web and one may easily come across them and eventually use them as part of the material. The writer must be careful enough to distinguish the validity and credibility of the site or content that he is basing his material from.

There are a couple of ways to include ideas from other materials into your own. It can be done through quoting, summarizing, or paraphrasing. Quoting is done by directly placing portions or parts of what was included in your resource material. It is a word-for-word placement of the resource material. Summarizing is providing a shorter version of the resource material while acknowledging that your material is based on the information you got from the source. Paraphrasing is trying to reword your source material but with the necessary attribution of where you got the idea from.

These three methods of including ideas from other materials should have a list of references. This list of references must obey one of the referencing standards and styles. There are two prevailing referencing styles that are being followed: the APA format, and the MLA format.

The Modern Language Association (MLA) format is distinguished by the following characteristics:

1. Authors' and editors' names are spelled out completely. If there are more than three authors, list the first one only and then write "et. al" as a substitute for all other authors.

2. Important words in a title is capitalized.

3. The shortened name of the published is placed.

4. Only the city is placed on the place of publication.

5. Dates are placed at the end of the citations.

6. The second and subsequent lines are indented while the first line is made to align with the left margin.

7. In-text citation uses authors name and page.

On the other hand, the American Psychological Association (APA) format is as follows:

1. All authors are listed and uses last name, and then the first initial.

2. Only the first word in a title is capitalized.

3. Full names are used for publishers.

4. Includes state abbreviations for the place of publication.

5. Dates are placed after the author's name.

6. The first line of the citation is indented while subsequent aligned to the left margin

7. In-text citations use author's name, date of publication, and page number.

Always remember that citation is done because you have the responsibility to give credit to the author of your source material. You would not want to steal other people's work. Also, you would not want other people from passing of your work as their own so you must also do the same for the work of others.

The MLA Style Center is the best and most interactive guide you can check out for your research. Aside from a citation guide, they also have a research format guide for your paper and a FAQ section.

Meanwhile, to see how APA citations are usually written in reference lists, visit this guide made by The University of Western Australia. It's already updated to the 6th edition. Here you can check how different resources are cited, such as Books and eBooks, Journal articles, Newspapers & Magazines and Web sources (pages, blogs, social media, etc).

Content Issues: Plagiarism, Copyright and Accessibility

Plagiarism, copyright infringement, and problems with accessibility are some of the issues that you may stumble upon when dealing with online content. Let's discuss in detail the implications of each of these content issues.

Plagiarism: Problems of Duplicity

One of the biggest sins you can commit while writing online materials is plagiarizing, which is the omission of reference to the original source of information, which gives an impression that it is the writer of the material at hand who originally said a statement even if that is not the case. This can be done on purpose or as a result of neglect. Even if it is by mere neglect that the citation was not made, plagiarism is still inexcusable. Plagiarism can be committed against written or spoken texts, and even against graphical content such as photos, drawing, sketches, paintings, and the like.

As an evaluator of online materials, your goal is to identify whether the author of the material you are assessing committed plagiarism, may it be partial or total in nature. Plagiarism should never be tolerated, and it is the responsibility of the evaluator to ensure whether or not plagiarism was committed in any piece of material that he handles, especially those that the general public can see.

Plagiarism is really unfair to the original owner of the unduly cited content. It takes credit away from him and awards it to the plagiarizer. All the hard work, creativity, and that the original owner of the content is put into waste, while the plagiarizer is praised for creating outstanding content - of course, why would anyone copy something that he does not consider as at least a good write-up, statement, or photo?

DMCA and Copyright Issues

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines copyright as the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (as a literary, musical, or artistic work). With a copyright, you can sue others who try to reproduce your work without your permission or consent. It is a protection given to the original creator, or to whom he grants the said protection, to benefit from his work.

In essence, violation of copyright (or more commonly referred to as copyright infringement) and plagiarism are similar. However, copyright infringement backed up by a legal construct while plagiarism is more of an ethical issue for academic, journalistic, or corporate institutions. Both of these promote originality and creativity as they protect the original creator of the work.

Copyright infringement and plagiarism do not go hand-in-hand. Not all cases of copyright infringement are cases of plagiarism as well, and vice versa. You can plagiarize content that do not qualify for copyright, and you can also commit infringement even if you have provided the necessary citation.

When talking about copyright, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) almost always follows. The DMCA is a copyright law of the United States which was made to implement two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as well as to heighten the penalties given to those who commit copyright infringement. The provisions of the DMCA will be discussed in detail on future write-ups focused on the topic. For now, it must just be fully understood that copyright infringement is a serious matter and there are strong laws against it.

As an evaluator, you must deal with copyright infringement issues before matters get worse. It is your duty to uphold the observance of applicable laws and ethical standards.

Content Accessibility

One billion people, or 15 % of the world's population, experience some form of disability, and disability prevalence is higher for developing countries. One-fifth of the estimated global total, or between 110 million and 190 million people, experience significant disabilities. - WorldBank.org

One billion people. A significant amount of this population have access to the Internet, but sadly, not all can access content found on the Internet. With the increasing demands for website accessibility, several countries have already pushed for accessibility legislation to support the disabled users' rights to information.

Disabled users commonly addressed by these efforts are those with visual, mobility, auditory, seizures and cognitive disabilities. Those with visual disabilities include low vision and color blindness. Motor disabilities include those who lack muscle control due to tremors or neurological conditions. Hearing impairments such as deafness are included in auditory disabilities. Meanwhile, people with seizures are a special case; those triggered by visual strobes or flashing effects are mainly affected in this category. Last but not the least, cognitive disabilities range from developmental to learning disabilities.

How does website accessibility help these users?

Website accessibility helps users to understand and access a website's information with the help of certain tools that aims to assist them in browsing a website. But, if a website is not optimized for accessibility, disabled users will have a hard time browsing a website.

There are available tools for the auditory and visually challenged to interact and use the Internet. Text-to-speech software and/or text-to-Braille hardware help blind users to access a website. For poor-sighted users, having a function to make the texts enlargeable would be helpful especially those without prescription glasses. Highlighting linked texts through underlines or contrast highlights will aid visually impaired users, especially those who are color blind.

Those with disabled motor abilities will benefit from large clickable areas like buttons on a website since they will lack precision in clicking small buttons. Moreover, coding a website that will let users navigate the website easily via keyboard or a single switch device can help them browse through the website even without using a mouse or a standard keyboard.

Today, playing videos has been less complicated as well. Those with hearing complications can now watch and understand the context of these videos through closed-captioning or via sign language. Meanwhile, flashing effects on websites are known to trigger seizure attacks. Minimizing or fully avoiding these effects will not be put those who are prone to seizure at risk.

Developmental or cognitive disabilities perhaps is the biggest challenge of them all. With various content available in different formats and in different contexts or degrees of reading difficulty, those who have a difficult time comprehending these content will shy away from a resource. Ideally, a resource content should be easy to understand, written in plain language, and equipped with instructional diagrams and even audio-visual aids.

To know more about website accessibility, Hosting Facts has another resource guide for web designers and developers on how to make your website accessible to all. This includes a brief history of web accessibility, steps on how to make your website accessible, and tools you can use to assess your website for accessibility in accordance to the guidelines set by WCAG 2.0.

With online content made accessible for everyone, even people with disabilities can understand and learn more information from the website.

Further Readings and References

APA citation style: Introduction. (n.d.) Retrieved July 21, 2016, from http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/apa

Disability Overview. (n.d.). Retrieved July 20, 2016, from http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/disability/overview

Evaluating Information. (n.d.). Retrieved July 20, 2016, from http://guides.library.jhu.edu/c.php?g=202581

Evaluating Internet Resources. (n.d.). Retrieved July 20, 2016, from http://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides/evaluating-internet-content

How to Make Websites User Friendly and Accessible for Everybody. (n.d.) Retrieved July 21, 2016, from https://hostingfacts.com/website-accessibility-guide/

Loshin, D. (2011). The Practitioner's Guide to Data Quality Improvement. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

The MLA Style Center. (n.d.) Retrieved July 21, 2016, from https://style.mla.org/

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The Complete Guide to Evaluating Online Resources - HostingFacts.com

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Table of Contents Part 1: The Need to Evaluate Internet Resources Part 2: Evaluating Online Resources Part 3: Checklist on Evaluating Online Resources Part 4: Improve Your Evaluation Skills Part 5: Content Issues: Plagiarism, Copyright and Accessibility Why Do We Need to Evaluate Online Resources? Everyone and anyone can create content online.

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Here is Mrs. Sargent's video explaining our discussion.

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To see our full infographics collection, click here.

We understand that it can be difficult (and sometimes confusing!) for students to piece together their MLA citations. That's why we created an MLA format citation template for you to share, distribute, and/or post for your students.

This infographic helps your students properly cite books, websites, online videos, online journal articles, and digital images in MLA format. While there are other variations for these citations, this template reflects the most common way to cite these source types.

Whether you decide to use this in conjunction with a research project, place it on display in your classroom as a visual reference, or print it out so students can store it in their binders or notebooks is up to you. The possibilities are endless. We want your students to be responsible researchers, who acknowledge the work of original authors, which in turn prevents plagiarism. Hopefully, this template makes it easier for your students to achieve this goal.

Citing in other styles? No problem! We also have citation tools and guides for APA format and Chicago style.
Find free citing tools for MLA format at EasyBib.com! We also have guides to help anyone make APA citations for books, websites, and other popular sources.

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MLA Citation Templates: Easy Infographic for Students - EasyBib Blog

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To see our full infographics collection, click here. We understand that it can be difficult (and sometimes confusing!) for students to piece together their MLA citations. That's why we created an MLA format citation template for you to share, distribute, and/or post for your students.

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Research Like a Pro

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Evaluating Sources - Use the C.R.A.P. Test!

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Depending on your field of study and current topic, you may use a variety of resources in your research. You will need to evaluate all of them to determine whether or not they are reliable and relevant to your current project. Whether you have a book, article, website, or other source, you can use the C.R.A.P.

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Can I copy something for my research?

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A copyright is a law that gives the owner of a written document, musical composition, book, picture, or other creative work, the right to decide what other people can do with it. Copyright laws make it easier for authors to make money by selling their works. Because of copyright, a work can only be copied if the owner of the copyright gives permission.

When someone copies or edits a work that is protected under copyright without permission, the owner may sue for the value of the violation. Most such cases are handled by civil law. In more serious cases, a person who copies a work that is protected under copyright could be arrested, fined or even go to prison.

In most countries, authors automatically own the copyright to any work they make or create, as long as they do not give the copyright to someone else.

In most countries, there is no need to register the copyright, and some countries do not even have procedures to register copyrights. But, where registration is available, many authors register anyway, especially for works that are sold for money. That is because registration helps to prove that the copyright of a work belongs to a certain author.

If an author gets paid to make a work for someone else, the person who pays for making the work (for example, the author's employer) will often get to own the copyright instead of the author him/herself. For example, if a person working for a company like Microsoft creates a new computer software program at work, the Microsoft company would own the copyright.

Copyright laws usually protect owners of copyright beyond their lifetime, such as until 50 years after the author's death. In some countries this period has been extended to 70 years. When the period of copyright protection has ended, the written document, musical composition, book, picture, or other creative work is in the public domain. This means that no one owns the copyright and everyone is free to copy, use and change them without having to ask for permission or pay the owner.

Copyright does not prohibit all copying or replication. There is an exception to the rules of copyright, called fair use. This means that people can copy a very small amount of a work to use in reviews or in research reports. Limited copying for educational purposes could also be justified under the fair dealing exemption.

An example of fair use is when newspaper writers quote several sentences from a copyright-protected document to tell the story. Another example of "fair use" is when a university professor quotes several sentences from a copyright-protected book in a review of the book, or in a research report. Also, it is OK for a teacher to copy material onto a blackboard or an interactive whiteboard under this exception. And it is OK for students to copy that material into their notebooks or laptops.

Using copyrighted pictures in unpublished school work, as long as the source is cited (e.g. Google or Kiddle images) also falls under the rule of fair use.

According to the US Copyright law, making 10 copies or more is considered to be commercial, but there is no general rule permitting such copying. Indeed, making copies for commercial purposes is not fair use.

EU copyright laws recognise the right of EU member states to implement some national exceptions to copyright. Examples of those exceptions are:

photographic reproductions on paper or any similar medium of works (excluding sheet music) provided that the rightholders receives fair compensation;

reproduction made by libraries, educational establishments, museums or archives, which are non-commercial;

archival reproductions of broadcasts;

uses for the benefit of people with a disability;

for demonstration or repair of equipment;

for non-commercial research or private study;

when used in parody.

Accessible copies

It is legal in several countries including the United Kingdom and the United States to produce alternative versions (for example, in large print or braille) of a copyrighted work to provide improved access to a work for blind and visually impaired people without permission from the copyright holder.

Different countries have different copyright laws. Most of the differences are about:

whether or not the government's work falls under copyright,

how much longer copyright lasts after the author dies or after the work is created or published, and

what is and what is not fair use.

Because of these differences, a certain piece of work may be under copyright in one country, and in the public domain in another.

Creativity

Some people argue that copyright laws make it easier for people to make new works and think of new ideas. After all, if authors get to make money for the time, effort and money they put in, then they will want to make more works later, and make more money.

But others believe that copyright laws make it harder to be creative. Without copyright, other people could reuse existing work, and copyright law often stops that.

Publisher control

If an author wants to sell a work, it's often easiest to give the copyright to a publisher. The publisher will do all the selling, and in return for that service, will keep part of the money. But the publisher has many different things to sell, and they may not want to sell the work the author made. Authors often find it very hard to find a publisher willing to sell their work.

But without a publisher, it can be even harder for an author to sell his or her work. In many markets, a few big publishers own the copyrights to almost everything available, and stores will not want to sell works published by small authors themselves. Many people say copyright law helps big publishers stay in control, and keeps smaller authors out of the market. ( tragedy of the anticommons).

Open content

As a solution to these problems, groups of authors have come up with the idea of open content. With open content, authors give everyone permission to copy, change and give away or sell their works, as long as they follow certain rules. These rules are explained in an open content license. Some possible open content rules are:

1. If a person changes the work, or if a person makes a new derivative work based on it, they must give the original author credit (they must say who wrote it).

2. If a person publishes the changed or derivative piece of work, they must let others use it under the same free license.

3. Under some licenses, a person cannot sell the piece of work or use it to make money.

The term for Open Content is sometimes Copyleft.

Related pages

Images for kids

European output of books before the advent of copyright, 6th century to 18th century. Blue shows printed books. Log-lin plot; a straight line therefore shows an exponential increase.

The Pirate Publisher-An International Burlesque that has the Longest Run on Record, from Puck, 1886, satirizes the then-existing situation where a publisher could profit by simply copying newly published works from one country, and publishing them in another, and vice versa.

A copyright symbol embossed on a piece of paper.

In Spanish: Copyright para niños

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Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Is It Plagiarism Yet?
Summary:
There are few intellectual offenses more serious than plagiarism in academic and professional contexts. This resource offers advice on how to avoid plagiarism in your work.

There are some actions that can almost unquestionably be labeled plagiarism. Some of these include buying, stealing, or borrowing a paper (including copying an entire paper or article from the Web); hiring someone to write your paper for you; and copying large sections of text from a source without quotation marks or proper citation.

But then there are actions that are usually in more of a gray area. Some of these include using the words of a source too closely when paraphrasing (where quotation marks should have been used) or building on someone's ideas without citing their spoken or written work. Sometimes teachers suspecting students of plagiarism will consider the students' intent, and whether it appeared the student was deliberately trying to make ideas of others appear to be their own.

However, other teachers and administrators may not distinguish between deliberate and accidental plagiarism. So let's look at some strategies for avoiding even suspicion of plagiarism in the first place.

When do we give credit?

The key to avoiding plagiarism is to make sure you give credit where it is due. This may be credit for something somebody said, wrote, emailed, drew, or implied. Many professional organizations, including the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Psychological Association (APA), have lengthy guidelines for citing sources. However, students are often so busy trying to learn the rules of MLA format and style or APA format and style that they sometimes forget exactly what needs to be credited. Here is a brief list of what needs to be credited or documented:

Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, website, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium

Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing

When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase

When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials

When you reuse or repost any digital media, including images, audio, video, or other media

Bottom line, document any words, ideas, or other productions that originate somewhere outside of you.

There are certain things that do not need documentation or credit, including:

Writing your own lived experiences, your own observations and insights, your own thoughts, and your own conclusions about a subject

When you are writing up your own results obtained through lab or field experiments

When you use your own artwork, digital photographs, video, audio, etc.

When you are using "common knowledge," things like folklore, common sense observations, myths, urban legends, and historical events (but not historical documents)

When you are using generally-accepted facts (e.g., pollution is bad for the environment) including facts that are accepted within particular discourse communities (e.g., in the field of composition studies, "writing is a process" is a generally-accepted fact).

Deciding if something is "common knowledge"

Generally speaking, you can regard something as common knowledge if you find the same information undocumented in at least five credible sources. Additionally, it might be common knowledge if you think the information you're presenting is something your readers will already know, or something that a person could easily find in general reference sources. But when in doubt, cite; if the citation turns out to be unnecessary, your teacher or editor will tell you.

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Here's a sheet to help you get started with your project/paper.

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Here's a sheet that will help you determine if your information is from a good source!