Copyright and Plagiarism and the Elementary School Child

It is not too early to begin giving children an awareness that other peoples' ideas are considered the
same as their personal belongings. Beginning in Kindergarten, children should begin giving credit to
their sources, even if it is a picture book they are using as a model for drawing a frog. The teacher
or librarian may want to have them copy the title of the book on their paper, telling them that we
give others credit for information that is not ours. Young children don't have a large enough frame
of reference to distinguish common knowledge from original ideas of others, and therefore should
be required to cite all sources.

Many times teachers and librarians assign "research papers" that require nothing more than a recitation
of facts found in traditional and Web resources. The vocabulary used is most often far too advanced for
children to understand and their vocabularies are too limited for them to "put it in their own words."
We are setting them up to plagiarize from the beginning because they will just copy what they find.

Consider:

• Having young children copy title and author instead of correct MLA, etc. citation. This at
  least gives them an awareness of crediting their sources, but won't bring tedium to the process.
• Adding additional bibliographic information to the citation, such as publisher and date, as children
  progress in grade and cognitive ability,
• Developing a standard citation format that your school will use for each grade.
• Structuring assignments so that young children won't have the opportunity to plagiarize. Most
  of the time, they are not realizing that they are doing anything wrong when they "copy" from
  whichever source they are using. If children are required to use higher-level thinking when communicating
  the results of the information finding, they are less likely to "copy." They will find the answers to basic
  questions posed by their teachers or themselves, but have to use the information in a higher-level result.
  Here is a link to categories of questions that teachers and librarians can ask during the task definition phase of the
  information search. It also includes the knowledge-level questions that children will "look up in the encyclopedia."
  The thought process doesn't stop at the knowledge and recall level when children are also having to
  answer questions on the upper end of Bloom's taxonomy.
• Activity to demonstrate value of intellectual property: Have the students produce something--a story, even a drawing
  that they really like. Then have them exchange and let the students "revise" each other's work. They can change anything
  they want, they can copy the basic idea and make their own product, whatever. Then have them return the "revised"
  items to the owners and discuss as a class how it feels to have your work pirated and changed without your permission.
  It may give them a sense of fairness about it. (Activity by Wendy Wood, The University of Texas at Austin, used with
  permission.)

Selected Copyright Links

Copyright Issues: Multimedia and Internet Resources Using & Creating
Fair Use Guidelines For Educational Multimedia
Using Materials from the Internet: What are the Rules?
Copyright Guidelines for Web Developers: What You Can and Cannot Do On the Internet
When Copying is OK: The 'Fair Use' Rule by Stephen Fishman
The Copyright Website
The United States Copyright Office The Library of Congress
Copyright for Educators

Copyright 2001, Barbara A. Jansen.
Librarian/Technology Coordinator,
St. Andrew's Episcopal High School, Austin, TX.
Lecturer, The Graduate School of Library & Information Science,
The University of Texas at Austin.

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