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February 13, 2009 1:43 PM PST

Worker-monitoring tool now eyeing student cheaters

by Mats Lewan
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MAS software

3ami's Monitoring and Audit System (pictured) is getting tweaked for use in schools, starting with 6,000 students in Norway.

(Credit: 3ami)

Norwegian high school students can now use state-provided laptops during exams. But they'd better not access notes, chat with friends, or surf the Web. Cheating will be detected immediately.

The system that will check on the students was originally developed to monitor corporate and government employees for productivity. As British security company 3ami, which created the software, puts it: "If you do not monitor, you do not know if they are doing any work."

The software, called "Monitoring and Audit System" or MAS, is now available in an Education Edition being pioneered by the Norwegian region Nord-Trondelag, where 6,000 students at 11 high schools have it installed on their laptops. Among forbidden actions that will be reported immediately to the examination officer are copying material and contacting friends.

Will a warning be sent to students who start a chat session by mistake or forget to close Facebook or Twitter? That is not yet clear. We just hope examination overseers have enough information to judge what's cheating and what's harmless.

Related story:

YouTube tests students' desire to cheat

Mats Lewan, IT and telecom editor at Swedish technology weekly Ny Teknik, has joined CNET News as a 2009 fellow with Stanford University's Innovation Journalism program. E-mail Mats.
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by Ryan_R February 14, 2009 2:47 PM PST
So what CAN they do on the laptops? Just give them a typewriter, or something running Linux (cheap shot, I know, sorry in advance) :o)
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by menty666 February 17, 2009 5:54 AM PST
If it's your laptop why would you agree to let ANYONE put software on there besides you? If they're school owned that's one thing, but otherwise..... Just run a VM app and blow away the layer they install it on :)
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by Heebee Jeebies February 17, 2009 8:29 PM PST
I believe they are provided by the school. Hence "Norwegian high school students can now use state-provided laptops during exams"
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