Friday, September 25, 2009

Academic Honesty

On Wednesday, in place of our weekly chapel speech, the entire school community was treated to a presentation on academic honesty and plagiarism. Following the presentation, all students met with their advisors to make certain that the message presented was understood. Each student then signed an academic honesty agreement.

Academic honesty is taken seriously at the Governor’s Academy. As headmaster Doggett reminded us, our reputations will follow us throughout our lives. Once tarnished, a reputation for dishonesty is hard to refurbish.

One tool that we provide to help our students avoid unintentional plagiarism is Noodle Tools. This program connects a student’s online note cards with the information needed for their citations and bibliography. If they desire, they can copy and paste entire sections of an electronic source on one card and type the actual words they intend to use from that source on another card. These two cards will remain in a group with the source card so the student can easily locate and document their sources.

We remain committed to helping our students be ethical users of information. Noodle Tools is just one of the library’s tools for supporting our community.

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