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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS