Plagerizing

I went back and looked at the copyright article, and it got me thinking about a recent discussion that took place with my fellow fifth grade teachers as well as with my fifth grade class.
We assigned a group project that goes along with our Annual Nifty 50 Convention in which the students need to create a trifold of information about the state in which they were assigned. One of the main ideas that they had to portray 4 - 6 places in which people should visit within their state. They had to show a picture and a description of this place. After assigning this project, and getting the final outcomes from the 7 state groups that were assigned in my class, it soon became apparent to me, that these students used the internet to find this information. That was great, they did searches, and found numerous websites that would give them the information that they needed. The other thing that became apparent to me (and the other fifth grade teachers), is that they also cut, copied and pasted the information from the internet right onto their project, without even rewriting it into their own words. We discussed this among the teachers during our team meeting and realized that they had no idea that what they were doing was wrong. This then stemmed into a complete lesson on teaching the students on information access, and determining what plagerizism really is. We required each of the states to re-do thier tri-folds so that the state information was re created into their own words.
This lesson has taught me as well. Children don't realize that if the words aren't in a book, then it wasn't plagerizing to them. That amazed me. We often have discussed this with the students and I often find myself reminding them what plagerizing is, and how to avoid the consequences of being caught.