Plagiarism is a growing concern in our society due to the abundant amount of resources available to people at the click of a button. It is for this reason that new databases are being presented to schools for the purpose of teaching students how to avoid plagiarizing.

At NK a new program is being introduced called Turnitin. It is a digital resource that serves many functions. When a piece of work is submitted into the Turnitin database, it will alert the person who submitted the paper if plagiarism is detected. This can be a helpful reminder for students to cite the sources they gathered information from. It can also alert a teacher grading a paper that a student plagiarized.

Ms. Pamela Rowland, NK’s library media specialist, is one of the minds behind the introduction to Turnitin at NKHS. When seniors used to write senior papers, there was a year when 25 students were discovered to have plagiarized. “It raised awareness to how serious of a problem it is,” said Rowland.

This year, five history and five English teachers will be piloting the system. They are currently undergoing training to better understand the different ways it can be utilized in the classroom.

Ms. Michele Lataille is one of the English teachers who will be incorporating Turnitin with her teaching.  She and Rowland stressed the fact that although Turnitin is used to detect plagiarizing, it is mainly to be used as a tool for students to better their writing and teach them to cite where they took information from.

Turnitin will hopefully remind students to cite sources, as well as help them with simple editing corrections. The different functions the database serves allows for a useful tool in and outside the classroom.