Topic 2 - Plagiarism and Referencing (Who, Where, Why, What, When, How)

Plagiarism and Referencing is something new to every first year college student, although it is necessary and very important it is a real pain and very hard to get your head around. I’m not trying to panic you but three months in and I’m still trying to figure it out. Firstly I will explain plagiarism to you and I have included a short video that might help you understand it.

Plagiarism is defined as taking another person’s work in the form of writing, music or ideas and using it as your own and taking credit for it. It can include information from assignment’s, websites or books. Plagiarism can occur due to careless thinking or lack of knowledge when it comes to referencing, which I will also explain to you in this blog. It also happens when people can't distinguish between their own ideas and others. Failure to take proper notes during lectures can also lead to plagiarism. ( Cooke, 2013)

Avoiding plagiarism is essential, always remember to give the author credit and reference whatever you use belonging to them. You must also reference anything that is not considered common knowledge. Quoting and paraphrasing can also be used to support your work. I have added a short video below that I watched in my lecture on Referencing and Plagiarism, hopefully it will help you understand a bit better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwZJQDwX7c0

Referencing is when you acknowledge the work of someone else after using it in your work. As well as acknowledgement we also use it to back up our work and avoid plagiarism. Here in ITB we use The Harvard Referencing style, at the beginning of this year we were giving a leaflet to follow when referencing which must always be kept beside you when doing assignment’s to keep you on the right track. I have added a video that should help you understand how to reference correctly, I would also suggest you check out the Anglia Ruskin Referencing Guide for futher help at referencing. ( Cooke, 2013)

References: COOKE, D. (2013) Communication and the learning environment. [ lecture notes] Plagiarism and Referencing. Institute of Technology Blanchardstown, Lecture Theatre 1, 15th October 2013.
What Is Plagiarism? [online] http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/plag/whatisplag.php [Accessed: 20^th November 2013]

Topic 1 - Kevin Breel Confessions of a Depressed Life

In one of my first Communication lectures we learnt effective note taking strategies. The six "R's" which are Recording information, Reducing down to key points, Reciting outloud, Reflecting on what you've learned, Reviewing your information and Recap to learn. we then touched on four techniques of effective note taking which are Cornell Format, Outline Format, Sentence Format and Mind Mapping. (Cooke, 2013)

After undertaking the VARK questioner in one of my first labs I was identified as a read/write learner. A read/write learner is someone who is good at taking notes during lectures. They study best by reading over there notes or copying them out.

For this blog post we were asked to watch the following video, during this video I jotted down notes in the Outline Format which consists of bulleted lists. The outline format allows me to start with the main concept and add sub components and then to add points to these sub components. for example when I was watching the video above my main component was Kevin Breel - confessions of a depressed life. I then added my sub components like clear speech and language, movement, tone of voice etc, each of these components had small pointers.

I find this method of note taking best for me because its concise and neat to do during lectures. When using this format I like to use different coloured pens, highlighters, flash cards and big headings, I find this very effective when Im learning. However I do elaborate my notes for study but having the bullet point format on flash cards is a good way of jogging your memory before exams as it allows you to see the main point and sub points clearly and quickly without having to read through pages of notes.

I am also a fan of using the Sentence Format as it is also very neat and clear. When using this I state facts and sentences very clearly on separate lines and sometimes use numbers and hyphens. After the lecture I can then re write the sentences into longer paragraphs in my own words which is better for my understanding and it also helps to reinforce learning. 

Thanks for reading my first blog post, Bebhinn.



References:
Cooke, D. (2013) Communicatons and the learning environment. [lecture notes] Evective Note Taking. Institute of Technology Blanchardstown, Lecture theatre 1, 24th September 2013.
STAKMATE, ( n.d ) social skills training for autistic kids. [online] Available from: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/~doyleth/reachteach/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=162&Itemid=210 [ Accessed: 13 November 2013]