Plagarism- Teacher or Student Responsibility

If you look at one my earlier posts, you will see a dear friend of mine called me a library nerd. It is so true! I have been a library fan since I was in the 6th grade (that is a blog topic for another day). And since I am such a library nerd, libraries are a part of all my conversations. Last weekend I was invited to a wonderful breakfast and of course, I was busy talking about my library classes. The father at the table teaches college English so even though he was at the other end of the table, we began to talk about research and plagarism. His college has software available to him so he can scan student work and determine if they have plagarized. He told me a story of a current professional who said they were too busy to write the paper so they got one off the Internet. YIKES!!!!! From everything I have learned I think we need to think much more seriously about the type of assignments we give to our students. Are our classes so shallow that our assignments can be found just sitting out on the web? Why aren't we looking at the upper levels of Bloom's for our assignments (k-college). Folks sometimes say something like, "my students can't operate at those levels". Well, is that the students' fault or the professionals' fault? From my point of view, I say it is the teacher all the way. I believe when students come to the library for research, they should be looking for some facts to fill in a graphic organizer and then they must leave and put that information together in a unique way. One simple example is asking students to compare and contrast. WE know this can help them think more creatively as well as ensure they cannot just copy someone else's work. What are you finding in your schools? What is the answer? Is punishment or threat of punishment effective with our students?