Not soon after reading the article, I receive an email asking me if a teacher from another district could use my material on creating a technology plan. I did not hesitate and said of course. Did this teacher just cheat or simply use her resources effectively? Isn't there a saying, "Why reinvent the wheel?" How many of us have found another lesson plan and snarfed it up to use it as our own? Are you cheating? Aren't you suppose to be creating your own lesson plans?
So what about our students in the classroom? If our students did the above, we accuse them of cheating or plagiarism. Aren't we being hypercritical? We should ask, if we can Google it, is that the a good question? Who was the first president of the United States? Who cares, I can Google it. Was George Washington the best choice for our first president or should someone else have deserved the honor? Explain. This last question is not so easily Googlable. It requires students to think, take a postion and justify their answer.
If you are a teacher who is discovering their students are simply finding answers on the Internet, then you are doing a good job teaching students how to use their resources, leveraging technology and collaborating with others. They are doing what they know how to do to find the answer. Is that wrong, or simply preparing students for their world today? If you want to know if a student understands, then change your question to allow for the leveraging technology to create justifiable positions.