NYT article on high tech cheating

[marite]

<p>Well, if the cellphones are hidden in the students’ underwear, they can’t make use of them. The ringtone is only meant to signal that a textmessage is coming. If the cellphone stays in the underwear, teens will need to have another device to decipher the messages through layers of clothing.
I don’t think you can learn a foreign language at such a pitch. Even Chinese opera singers singing falsetto don’t sing at such a pitch!</p>

[katonahmom]

<p>Well, that’s a relief. Since the ingenuity of techno-nerds tends to be unbounded these days I am glad that this is one case when it is over when the fat lady sings.</p>

[asteriskea]

<p>Article on “post-modern, eclectic, Google-generationists, Wikipediasts, who don’t necessarily recognise the concepts of authorships/ownerships.” Is the moral of the story “The good plagarists aren’t caught.” ??</p>

<p><a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5093286.stm[/url]”>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5093286.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[xiggi]

<p>The anti plagiarism tools have one weakness: relying on English only. Students who master foreign languages, especially a different mother tongue, have a world of additional sources at their disposal. Obviously, one drawback is that the “original” foreign source might have been translated from English. </p>

<p>What a web we weave!</p>

[katonahmom]

<p>This article doesn’t have much to do with cheating but it rang a bell (sorry, I couldn’t resist that one) with this old thread and images of cell phones, underwear, students’ igenuity, even though there aren’t any high pitched opera singers in the picture …</p>

<p>From the New York Daily News: “Your bra is ringing: Students defy ban”</p>

<p>"City kids aren’t letting the cell phone ban hang them up.</p>

<p>From paying to stash cell phones at delis to burying them “where the sun don’t shine,” students across the city are going to new heights to skirt the unpopular ban backed by Mayor Bloomberg.</p>

<p>“It isn’t hard for girls at all. We just put the phone in our underwear,” said Veronica Abreu, 16, from Martin Luther King High School in Manhattan.</p>

<p>MLK students used to leave their phones at a nearby bodega, but after a clerk took off with their money and a bunch of phones, they got creative.</p>

<p>“If the metal detector goes off, they only search your lower legs and upper body,” Abreu said. Girls said they also sneak them in for the boys.</p>

<p>Students at the Automotive Career and Technical Education High School agreed.</p>

<p>“You take the cell battery out, put it in your book bag, then you stick your phone where the sun don’t shine,” said one.</p>

<p>Others said they hide their phones in their shoes, belts, bras and even the scaffolding surrounding the building.</p>

<p>Since spring, the Education Department has been clamping down on cell phones in schools. The toughened stance has sparked controversy - and ingenuity…"</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/471778p-397033c.html[/url]”>http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/471778p-397033c.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[asteriskea]

<p>“Technology is not the whole answer, it is about educating candidates from an early age about what is appropriate and what isn’t.” Well, yes.</p>

<p>This is really getting to be a tangled web with what might be the ultimate revenge of adult techno-nerds:</p>

<p>

Students should sit exams in metal-lined rooms to block mobile phone signals amid fears that technology is fuelling a “substantial” increase in cheating, a Government-backed study said yesterday.</p>

<p>Thousands of children may be using phones to send text messages to friends for answers or to access the internet during tests. Others down-load data on to MP3 players smuggled into exam halls.</p>

<p>The report, commissioned by the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency, the official exams watchdog, said staff must take drastic action to stop sophisticated cheats undermining the examinations system altogether.</p>

<p>In one recommendation, teachers are asked to consider using a Faraday cage, named after its inventor, Michael Faraday, in which metal is built into the walls of rooms to block electromagnetic waves.</p>

<p>Airport-style security scanners should also be installed to stop candidates taking in phones and other aides.</p>

<p>Prof Jean Underwood, from Nottingham Trent University, who carried out the study, suggested that large universities should fingerprint students to stop friends taking exams for them.</p>

<p>“Digital technologies have brought equity to cheating,” she said. “Access is no longer for the knowing few but is there for the majority.”</p>

<p>Cheating in exams has soared. The QCA said that more than 4,500 candidates were penalised in 2005, an increase of 27 per cent in 12 months. Of these, about 1,100 smuggled in mobile phones.</p>

<p>Prof Underwood’s report said the use of technology to cheat was a “very significant problem”. In the past, concerns over cheating had concentrated largely on using the internet to copy essays, particularly at university level.</p>

<p>This year, a study of 119 universities by the Times Higher Educational Supplement said that one in six students admitted cheating and more than a third used the internet to plagiarise essays.</p>

<p>However, Prof Underwood said cheating was likely to be worse in schools.</p>

<p>This year it was announced that course work would be banned in many A-level subjects to eradicate the problem, but yesterday’s report indicated that exams could be just as open to abuse.</p>

<p>“Digital technologies can act as electronic crib sheets and allow students to seek help from peers or others within and outside the hall,” said Prof Underwood.</p>

<p>The QCA advises schools to ban phones from exam halls, but many still get them in.</p>

<p>Prof Underwood said the most effective method to beat the cheats was to use jamming devices, but such technology is banned by Ofcom.</p>

<p>“A potentially less expensive, but legally untested, alternative is blanket cloaking of an examination hall using a basic Faraday cage,” she said. “New types of mobile-phone blocking paint could be available in the future.”</p>

<p>Prof Underwood also recommended the use of biometric technology — such as fingerprint checks, retina scans and voice recognition — to prevent imposters sitting tests for their friends.</p>

<p>However, she said: “Legal, social and cost barriers will severely restrict what technology can offer.”</p>

<p>A spokesman for the QCA said: "Technology is not the whole answer, it is about educating candidates from an early age about what is appropriate and what isn’t.</p>

<p>“However, the QCA will give consideration to the recommendations made and look into the legal implications of different technology.”</p>

<p>Head teachers said cheating in course work remained the biggest problem and that it should be possible to identify most exam cheating.

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/05/ncheat05.xml[/url]”>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/05/ncheat05.xml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[Perplexitudinous]

<p>In the end the most sophisticated hi-tech cheaters are the ones who miss out the most. Yes, it is off-putting to know that some other “students” may be getting good grades (for now, anyway) without putting in the effort, but I can still put in the effort myself and learn.</p>

[originaloog]

<p>“If they’d spent half as much time studying … they’d all be “A” students.”</p>

<p>I have always said the same thing about these big drug dealers, “If they used their organizational skills in a legit venture, they would be successful businessmen.”</p>