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Teen cheating morphs with new tech, poll shows
Parents have yet another reason for a long, hard talk with their kids. More than half of teens admit to using the Internet to cheat, a new poll shows, while 35 percent say they've used their cell phones.
The results were released Thursday by Common Sense Media, which commissioned research firm Benenson Strategy Group to conduct the poll.
The report (PDF) uncovered several alarming trends. More than 38 percent of teens say they've copied content from the Internet and presented it as their own work, while 21 percent have downloaded an actual paper to turn in as their own. Around 65 percent say they've seen other students cheat on tests using their cell phones.
(Credit:
Common Sense Media)
Many teens don't even see this behavior as wrong, according to the poll. Among those asked, 36 percent say that downloading a paper from the Internet was not a serious offense; 42 percent believe that copying text from Web sites was either a minor offense or not cheating at all. And 22 percent of those asked didn't feel that reading from notes on a cell phone during a test is cheating.
(Credit:
Common Sense Media)
"Cell phones and the Internet have been a real game-changer for education and have opened up many avenues for collaboration, creation, and communication," said James Steyer, CEO and founder of Common Sense Media. "But as this poll shows, the unintended consequence of these versatile technologies is that they've made cheating easier."
Parents may also be naive in thinking that while other kids cheat, their own don't. The poll found that 92 percent of parents believe cell phone cheating happens at their kids' schools, but only 3 percent believe their own teen has ever used a cell phone to cheat. And 79 percent of parents say that kids download papers from the Internet as their own work, but only 7 percent believe their own teen has ever done this.
Common Sense Media offers the following tips for parents:
• Do your homework. Be aware of the technology that kids use every day. • Don't assume that kids automatically know what's right or wrong. They need you to set the rules. • Review school policies with them. • Address the issue with your kids so the consequences of cheating are fully understood.Common Sense Media's site offers additional advice to help parents deal with this issue.
To conduct the poll, Benenson interviewed 2,015 students and parents across the U.S. in May and early June. The margin of error is about 3 percent.
Lance Whitney wears a few different technology hats--journalist, Web developer, and software trainer. He's a contributing editor for Microsoft TechNet Magazine and writes for other computer publications and Web sites. You can follow Lance on Twitter at @lancewhit. Lance is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and he is not an employee of CNET. 
I personally have never downloaded a song of used pirated software. I have owned a commercial software developement company . Most people who pirate softaware are not potential customers. Most who have a legitimate need for the software will pay for it (in my experience).
When you get right down to it with corporate greed and corruption, theft of copyrighted material by not only by people downloading music and movies but companies like Google that think they can use whatever their software finds on the internet (like stuff from newspaper sites, images from people flicker and other photo sites, etc.) without having to worry about copyright and the in general low morals of people these days with a nice bit of everything is disposable what's important is having THINGS. It is not wonder this kind of stuff isn't seen as wrong.
When a company like Google feels they can do what they won't without repercussions what's copying a little text off the web for a report? Nothing really. When mortgage companies can shaft people with home loans and credit card companies can give people without jobs credit cards with $20,000 credit limits and then when it all falls in like the house of cards that it is and the government comes and bails them out, why should teens feel that using technology to help them with their school work isn't cheating. Hell, they have been allowing students to use calculators in math classes for at least 3 decades. That's cheating too.
I say <SHRUG> it doesn't matter. With text messaging and IM destroying English and all of the other things sucking human kind in to the toilet what's a little plagiarism or cheating. You can't very well scold the kinds for being cheats and crooks and liers when those running the world, governments and corporations are ones too.
Robert
The act of taking feloniously the personal property of
another without his consent and knowledge; theft; larceny.
Now, if I obtain software by any means, does the original owner not still have the original copy? If I obtain an MP3 or a record or a cassette tape or a CD, they are all just copies. I haven't taken any property, I've made a copy.
It's not splitting hairs if there's a real difference. whobob is right, it's copyright infringement but it's far from theft.
Hell at one time a calculator was considered cheating. Next you are going to see a survey about college students that cheat when doing online classes. The info is there they will use it.
Colleges - especially non-Ivy League type colleges these days are really struggling economically with more than budget cuts. Most of their administrators have no formal business training and are simply incompetent in managing an educational institution in a practical and business like way. These traditional bricks and mortar institutions are now competing head on for enrollment with online institutions who have a fraction of the over head costs and are rapidly becoming more popular with students than traditional classroom courses. Because of the lack of professional management skills in most college administrations, they fail to recognize that their business model is non-competitive, all the while continuing to build more and more un-needed classrooms and auditoriums (often a case of administrative ego and empire building), even as budgets shrink and enrollments are lost to online institutions. Overhead costs for all that bricks and mortar maintenance continues to rise such that few colleges today have adequate maintenance staffs for even the most basic repairs. In my wife's case it isn't uncommon for her to drag her classes from classroom to classroom trying to find a working projection system. Today faculty find they are the ones sacrificing class prep-support resources and work twice the hours for the same pay to help the administration pay for the overhead.
Even so you won't find a student sitting in the back of the crowd of 59 in my wife's classes texting. Her tests - except the final are all open book. Too easy you say. No, she has near perfect bell shape curves of test scores from A's to F's.. The tests are designed so that only people very familiar with the text can find the materials necessary to determine the answers. The final consists of a battery of questions that are randomized by topic - so that each topic is evenly represented and then there are multiple layout variations of each tests set of questions - re-randomized each semester such that the odds of two students sitting side by side having the same tests are slim. You can't keep students from ever cheating. You can make it difficult. Educators also need to consider the pragmatic side - if a student cheats and has not learned the material, they will ultimately, pay the price when they are unable to advance without that knowledge. Or, they are caught and dismissed. If however, the student cheats, advances and the cheating never costs him anything - perhaps we are teaching information that simply are not needed.
It should be quite clear to even the dullest education administrators and planners that in a world where our information doubles every five years, the education system and what it teaches will have to constantly and carefully sorted so that students get the basics for critical thinking and the methods they need to source information necessary to solve problems quickly, creatively and efficiently. We need administrations more focused on this kind of educational process, method and material prioritization and less on monument building. Folks as far as I can see in the colleges I have regular contact with - this isn't happening anywhere in the US and until it does things are just going to get worse in our schools.
Some feel the need to cheat, even with all the advantages I never had in school - and I thought I had it good in the 70s? Sheesh.
It stems from a lack of trust.
Or perhaps from being abandoned by their parents at an early age. lol
Cheating is still wrong (obviously) because it's a rule established by wherever you go to school...so you have to respect that...but if you CAN get away with cheating, you're definitely smart in your own way.
Heck, you might even be cut out to do some undercover police work when you're older...sleight-of-hand and stealth is very important there. :)
that way kids understand how to solve the problem instead of just remembering an answer.
Memorizing dry formulas is way over-rated.
In real life, you really don't need to know all that stuff.
Besides, if you really need to use it, you can always look it up.
We need a revision in the way we think...I just wish I knew what the answer was.
How old are you? 16 or something?
But thanks for asking.
</sarcasm>
When you're taking a test, it's impossible to type out each question, sort it into a category, and wait for people to work each one out and respond to it. Especially if you don't want to be seen.
text copied from Internet :NAY
why?.
Actually, text copied from the internet isn't "NAY", it's treated the same way text copied from a book is. If it's cited correctly, then no problem, at least in my experience.
I agree, though...standardized tests are wayyy over-rated.
But there is a nagging feeling in me that stems from my own day to day experience, for lack of a better word.
I have come to the point that I consider Google my external expanded memory. And YouTube etc.
Hardly a day goes by where I do not consult the Internet from spell check to translation to background info to you name it.
Sure, it is not the same. Or is it?
I'd hate to see a resume that says:
I'm able to do anything from welding to complex gantt charts as long as I have an internet connection and access to the world wide web. But if the power goes out and I'm on a desktop I can stand there and look stupid until someone else comes a long who actually learned something.
Oh, and the teachers are just getting lazy. I can lock down a classroom. How about having everyone turn off your cell-phones. Then, we will just revert back to the low-tech methods we all know and love. Oh, and parents are coddling their kids with cell phones and data plans and justifying them in the classroom. Do they really need that much at school or should they focus on learning?
Resourcefullness is only one aspect of intelligence.
Oh and if you were wondering why my spelling or grammer is incorrect it is because I cheated in school when I was a kid.
Best Regards,
Derek
On the other hand, you may be exceptionally qualified to text your friends while asking "ya want fires with that?"
- by twitchin2021 June 22, 2009 9:14 PM PDT
- Has anyone given thought to the idea that maybe it's come time to redefine what it means to "cheat"? In a day and age where so many people have such open access to social networking tools, research materials, and an incalculable amount of instant information perhaps it's not such a bad thing that students are using them. Yes, obviously, copying someone else's work is unacceptable, but using a cellphone to check a website for information to solve a problem seems pretty legitimate to me. Education systems in the western world have become so preoccupied with analyzing how effectively students can retain and regurgitate facts that it's neglecting to encourage them to creatively seek out solutions to problems or to act as they would in the real world when asked to prepare a report of some sort. If I were asked by my boss to write up a report on the benefits of drinking milk over water who would expect me to do it from memory? Isn't it more useful that I have developed the ability to seek out, digest, and reformulate information form a variety of places and collaborate with peers to create a report that is accurate and well presented? I don't know, maybe I'm way off the mark, but that comment someone else made about how using calculators used to be considered cheating is resonating with me right about now.
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