Plagiarism

     The student clearly plagiarized in their blog post.  This is their fault, wrong and if unintentional, avoidable.  

     The student is at fault for plagiarizing.  They copied someone's words and pasted, without quoting or giving credit to the original author.  Whether they meant to or not, it is wrong.  An example of their plagiarism is that they copied two full paragraph's of the article "A Brief Understanding of the Starry Night Paintings": "Although the features are exaggerated, this is a scene we can all relate to, and also one that most individuals feel comfortable and at ease with. This sky keeps the viewer's eyes moving about the painting, following the curves and creating a visual dot to dot with the stars. This movement keeps the onlooker involved in the painting while the other factors take hold. Below the rolling hills of the horizon lies a small town. There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. Perhaps the cool dark colors and the fiery windows spark memories of our own warm childhood years filled with imagination of what exists in the night and dark starry skies. The center point of the town is the tall steeple of the church, reigning largely over the smaller buildings. This steeple casts down a sense of stability onto the town, and also creates a sense of size and seclusion."  This is a huge amount of text that was clearly just copied and pasted.  The student again is in the wrong.

     The student could have avoided plagiarism very easily.  They could have used a quote and credited the source.  They could have also paraphrased the source and granted it credit.  Lastly, they could have used specific details from the source and paraphrased them.  The student could have written something like;  "According to the article, "A Brief Understanding of the Starry Night Paintings," "Although the features are exaggerated, this is a scene we can all relate to."  This way, the source is quoted and credited.  

    The student committed a crime by plagiarizing.  It's easy to avoid plagiarizing.  I will use these tools to help me keep avoiding plagiarizing in the future.