Week 5

Working on my digital story these past few weeks reminds me a lot of how I run writer's workshop in my classroom.  The steps are the same (prewriting, rough draft, editing, revising, and publishing), but the end product will be a little different.  I am interested in impleting digital stories into my classroom even more so now that I can directly and effieciently involve students in the writing process while allowing them to create something creative at the same time.  I  think that writing will become more meaningful to my students and give them a goal to work towards, by viewing other digital stories. 

Plagiarism has been a problem for as long as anyone can possibly remember.  It is not a new trick that students are doing, students just have more opportunities to do it with the internet and so many digital sources.  I think many times we assume that students understand plagiarism, when in reality they don't.  I do not think we start teaching students internet responsiblity at an early enough age.  Students at young ages are capable of writing a simplified citation acknowledging what internet site they found information at.  These simplified citations would then be built upon each year, and become more and more commonplace in our education system.  Often times student aren't taught how to write a citation until junior high and it is introduced in a somewhat complex manner to a student who has never been required to do it before that point.  As with any material we teach, this is a skill that must be built upon especially in today's technological world.