way2go! 5, Band für Lehrerinnen und Lehrer
59 transcripts Coursebook (audio + video) education. The purpose of education is for students to learn something, and so when they are, let’s say, channelling somebody else’s words, they are not only misrepresenting the authorship, but they are not responsible for it because they haven’t even thought about it. So in that sense plagiarism is really problematic because it shows a disregard and a disdain for the educational enterprise. Interviewer: Is this something that’s talked about on university campuses, do you have these discussions with your students or is this a theme that comes up regularly among students and among educators? Susan Blum: Usually faculty give a kind of announcement to their students plagiarism and cheating will not be tolerated. There are conferences all the time about academic integrity. Some schools have honour codes, but I don’t think that the conversations have been nuanced enough. I think that the tendency has been on morality and criminality, and it hasn’t really been on the subtle concerns about authorship, and it certainly hasn’t been about the connection between plagiarism and lack of learning. Coursebook, Unit 09, exercises 2a and 2b ( À 20) Announcer: Listen to three people talking about their holiday plans. … Sophie. Sophie: I went to this youth camp last year and I really enjoyed it. So this year I’ve decided I’m going to do it again. It’s like this really small camp with just fifty people from all around the world. It’s in the woods, close to a lake, so we can do lots of fun leisure activities. I’m going to spend every evening at the campfire again, swapping ghost stories with the others and having a laugh. I’ll probably fall asleep halfway through again … We sleep in sleeping bags, which I don’t really like, and just like, you know, tents and things. I normally prefer to have a bit more luxury on my holidays, but it’s OK, the other stuff makes up for it: the nice people, good food, great games – I just love it. Announcer: Estella Estella: Well, this year we’re going to take a city trip to London. I always travel with my family, and we’re going to stay in a bed and breakfast. … I’m really looking forward to going because I’ve heard the English breakfasts in London are fantastic. I think there’ll be lots of things I’ve never had before – that’s going to be great. It’s the first time I’ve ever been to London or any place like that, so I’m really thrilled about going sightseeing. Hopefully we’ll get to take a ride on one of those cool open-top double decker buses. We’re definitely going to visit Buckingham Palace and hopefully I’ll get to see the Queen. Not sure if I will though. I’ve heard if the flag is flying on the roof of the palace, the Queen is at home, so I’m definitely going to check for that! Announcer: Dorian Dorian: Ugh, there are so many places I’d love to go on holiday, but instead I have to go to Spain with my family. We go there every year and I think it’s really boring. And what’s worse, I have to go with my little brother! He’s really annoying. He’s five years old, and I’ll probably have to spend all my time with him again, and even social networking media, that young people kind of have this idea that this stuff doesn’t belong to anyone anymore, that it’s just out there for general use, so why not use it? Is that right? Susan Blum: I think that is right. The whole idea that something might have an author who must be recognised as opposed to something without an author is very important. I think there are two things about Wikipedia that we need to understand. One is that it’s authorless in a sense, I mean that’s obviously not true, and if you ever look at the discussion page or the history page of a Wikipedia entry, you can see that there actually are individuals who have taken the trouble to make a contribution. The other thing about Wikipedia is that it gives evidence of the generosity of creators, and I think this is a value that is really widely shared, especially among young people. They think that it’s wonderful that people have put things out there for the world to use without requiring any kind of payment or any kind of acknowledgement, and so we’re asking them to do something completely different when we’re asking for a citation and attribution. Interviewer: Is there also this sort of post-modern idea that creativity has also changed? You know, you talk about, I think, TV shows that reference other TV shows and music that samples other music, so the whole idea of, you know, what is creative, what I have created myself, has somehow changed completely as well, among this generation. Susan Blum: I think a lot of scholars actually accept that idea that there is not so much novelty in artistic creations and that absolute originality is in some ways an illusion. And so I think students often are quite aware of that. There’s this idea that sampling is a creative activity, but it doesn’t require complete originality from a blank slate. So you can take bits and pieces of things that have already been published, broadcast, screened and re-combine them in new ways that says something new. Interviewer: But isn’t there a difference between creatively incorporating other people’s material into something new and just outright copying, can’t we draw that distinction? Susan Blum: I think we absolutely can, and in that sense I would like to emphasise that the term plagiarism is often used in a slightly loose way to cover everything from forgetting quotation marks in a quotation to buying a paper or copying something completely. Copying something completely, presenting it knowingly as your own even though you didn’t write it, is fraud, really, and fraud is never acceptable. But creatively incorporating things is certainly something that all artists have always done. Interviewer: The idea of authorship is connected to authority, isn’t it, and you know, the idea is that when you write something you take responsibility for it. Myself, as a journalist, if I write a piece, then my name goes on it and therefore I am responsible for what I write. So isn’t it kind of dangerous to start separating those two things, somehow? Susan Blum: That’s a great question. In some ways that gets at the heart of the problem of plagiarism for Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
Made with FlippingBook
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODE3MDE=