Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious -- students were writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning mobile phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each other.
Now, schools across the US are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device. Devices including iPods and Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say.
"It doesn't take long to get out of the loop with teenagers," said Mountain View High School principal Aaron Maybon. "They come up with new and creative ways to cheat pretty fast."
Mountain View recently enacted a ban on digital media players after school officials realized some students were downloading formulas and other material onto the players.
"A teacher overheard a couple of kids talking about it," said Maybon.
Shana Kemp, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said she does not have hard statistics on the phenomenon but said it is not unusual for schools to ban digital media players.
"I think it is becoming a national trend," she said. "We hope that each district will have a policy in place for technology -- it keeps a lot of the problems down."
Using the devices to cheat is hardly a new phenomenon, Kemp said. However, sometimes it takes a while for teachers and administrators, who come from an older generation, to catch on to the various ways the technology can be used.
Some students are using iPod-compatible voice recorders to record test answers in advance and then play them back, said 16-year-old Mountain View junior Damir Bazdar.
Others download crib notes onto the music players and hide them in the "lyrics" text files. Even an audio clip of the old Schoolhouse Rock take on how a bill makes it through Congress can come in handy during some US government exams.
Kelsey Nelson, a 17-year-old senior at the school, said she used to listen to music after completing her tests -- something she can no longer do since the ban. Still, she said, the ban has not stopped some students from using the devices.
"You can just thread the earbud up your sleeve and then hold it to your ear like you're resting your head on your hand," Nelson said. "I think you should still be able to use iPods. People who are going to cheat are still going to cheat, with or without them."
Still, schools around the world are hoping bans will at least stave off some cheaters.
Henry Jones, a teacher at San Gabriel High School in San Gabriel, California, confiscated a student's iPod during a class and found the answers to a test, crib notes and a definition list hidden among the teen's music selections. Schools in Seattle, Washington, have also banned the devices.
The practice is not limited to the US: St. Mary's College, a high school in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada, banned mobile phones and digital medial players this year, while the University of Tasmania in Australia prohibits iPods, electronic dictionaries, CD players and spell-checking devices.
Conversely, Duke University in North Carolina began providing iPods to its students three years ago as part of an experiment to see how the devices could be used to enhance learning.
The music players proved to be invaluable for some courses, including music, engineering and sociology classes, said Tim Dodd, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke. At Duke, incidents of cheating have declined over the past 10 years, largely because the community expects its students to have academic integrity, he said.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
TICKING CLOCK: A path to a budget agreement was still possible, the president’s office said, as a debate on reversing an increase of the pension age carries on French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday was racing to find a new prime minister within a two-day deadline after the resignation of outgoing French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu tipped the country deeper into political crisis. The presidency late on Wednesday said that Macron would name a new prime minister within 48 hours, indicating that the appointment would come by this evening at the latest. Lecornu told French television in an interview that he expected a new prime minister to be named — rather than early legislative elections or Macron’s resignation — to resolve the crisis. The developments were the latest twists in three tumultuous
FIRST STAGE: Hamas has agreed to release 48 Israeli hostages in exchange for 250 ‘national security prisoners’ as well as 1,700 Gazans, but has resisted calls to disarm Israel plans to destroy what remains of Hamas’ network of tunnels under Gaza, working with US approval after its hostages are freed, it said yesterday. Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz said that the operation would be conducted under an “international mechanism” led by the US. “Israel’s great challenge after the hostage release phase will be the destruction of all Hamas terrorist tunnels in Gaza,” Katz said. “I have ordered the army to prepare to carry out this mission,” he added. Hamas operates a network of tunnels under Gaza, allowing its fighters to operate out of sight of Israeli reconnaissance. Some have passed under
RSS