Comments on: Kids cheating with tech but are schools cheating kids?

A recent survey shows 35 percent of middle school and high school students have used cell phones to cheat at school. Troubling but maybe we need to re-think what it means to evaluate students.

[sbalkam]

On a trip to London last week, I learned of charter schools in the UK which hand out specially adapted iPhones to all their students and insist that they bring them to school for work in the classrooms and to take them home with them for homework. Seems to me to be where we're heading rather than unworkable blanket bans on the technologies kids bring to schools. Stephen Balkam, Family Online Safety Instutute

[Random_Walk]

There are of course a couple of very simple remedies for this...

* ban the very existence of cell phones in a classroom. All students get to leave all materials at the back of the room. any student caught w/ a cell phone flunks automatically.

* if/when possible, don't rely on paper tests for the whole test score. I used to teach for a living, and found that the best metrics for grading success or failure wasn't in the paper test, but to do it in stages. Now mind you this is CompSci, but I almost always gave a paper test, followed by a pair of practical tests. The practical tests? First, build a system/program/network that does X, Y, and Z within a short time frame. If you passed, you got to go away for awhile. Second, upon your return, you would troubleshoot problems induced on the same system, but also in a short time frame.

It practically eliminated cheating, since no amount of notation will tell you if there's a clear strip of tape on the network card contacts, or if there's a typo buried in the source code, or if you failed to secure your system enough to prevent a typical bit of malware to pop in and make subtle but deep changes that you had to hunt down and report on (with deductions for each one missed).

I didn't even care if the students used Google to hunt down troubleshooting tips and tricks, since the clock was ticking, and their grades depended on being fast but thorough. I basically emulated the real world... if they survived the emulation, odds were good they would survive the real thing later down the road.

Now this is obviously not always practical for all tests, but it is possible on many of them.

[fazalmajid]

Only lazy teachers rely on multiple-choice questionnaires to grade their students, in a travesty of evaluation. Unfortunately, this is the rule rather than the exception in the US.

When I was in school in France, we would have to turn in proper papers (including maths papers with proofs and all) and essays, and the teachers would go over them individually. Sure, it takes time, but it makes fore a much higher standard of education.

[Jive Turkey]

I'm always against cheating, but sometimes exams are harder than the real world and that's just ridiculous. I'm doing an IT course right now and we're expected to memorise lists of information that my lecturer admits no-one in the industry knows these off the top of their head. Things like IRQs, which are important to understand, but to be able to list them all is unnecessary when it takes 10 seconds to look them up on the Internet.

[solitare_pax]

Perhaps in the higher grades, tech should be permitted on a limited basis, but in the lower grades, students need to learn how to memorize things, and learn how to apply themselves to the challenges posed in the classroom - and in real life. Otherwise in time, people will forget how to do common things, like read, write and arithmetic, just as many people in modern societies don't know how to raise food or sew.

If people become too dependent on tech, what will they do when it fails or becomes unavailable? There are enough sci-fi movies out there to show the possibilities.

[Jwdodson]

These are two separate issues. Cheating is cheating, no matter whether you look on your classmates paper or if you look on mobile device. Do not excuse it. Do not confuse the issue by saying we should be testing this way or that way. That being said analysis is of course extremely important. However one must have a modicum of facts in order to even begin to analyze. It is extremely helpful to know a little something before you go looking for more information. Retrieval and evaluation of information is important and should be taught and tested. Cheating is inexcusable no matter what level you are operating in.

[kimberleymyers]

Having students work out there responses is one way to avoid the texting of answers from one student to another. As a math teacher, every one of my assessments requires (for points) the entire process to be written out on paper. This would be very difficult to do via cell phone.

However, my school has a policy that has the student put their cell phone on the desk or table during a quiz or test.

I agree with this article, however, that we are cheating the students by not using technology better. I am currently involved in a masters program, integrating technology into the classroom, which will help me learn how to "do different things" using technology. Todays students definately need to be able to not only memorize certain facts, but also know how to find them readily using technology.