How to avoid plagiarism

Plagiarism and its avoidance have gained for attention in educating students. A lot of institutes define it using examples. General agreement is that plain copying of existing material is definitely plagiarism. The current information flow in the Internet and the use of computers in the writing process makes it too easy for students to avoid the actual learning-bywriting and just to perform cut-and-paste for their essay or report. At the same time the information flow makes it almost impossible for teachers to detect all of these flaws. Automatic detection tools have been developed to help teachers in this process. However, the detection is just one part of the story. It is much more important that the authors (students as well as researchers) do not copy from others, but say it using their own voice and words. We should also remember that some students have copied material even before the current technology.