-By Lucy Lee (Grade 12)

The secondary students of TIS learned a very valuable lesson from a presentation lead by our principal of secondary school, Mr. Chris Coates. It was on a topic that many students would be uncomfortable to discuss about—plagiarism. Mr. Coates emphasized the importance TIS has on its students being “good people” more than just “good students”. In order to prevent the consequences of plagiarism, he believes that educating the students beforehand and taking proactive measures will be more effective than being reactive to plagiarism after it is done.

Students learned about the types of cheating; there is more to plagiarizing than just looking at someone else’s tests. Sharing work, knowing that it can be copied by others, is another form of academic dishonesty. Mr. Coates recognizes that this is something that can be mistaken as helping a friend. Having learned about its’ consequences, he hopes that students can value their own personal work and prevent sharing it with others. Using work from other sources can be helpful to many students’ education, but it has to be done through giving proper credits to the creators of the work. Learning about proper citations can help students prevent academic dishonesty to produce works that are their own.

TIS is using a new internet based plagiarism checking program called Turnitin—a program that can check if the work students produced uses materials from other works. Through these proactive measures, TIS hopes to have honest, conscientious students that can avoid academic dishonesty to create amazing works that are proudly their own.