Schools Banning iPods
There are inventive ways to cheat. It seems that some people are willing to go to great lengths to cheat when studying might actually be easier. Take the iPod, for example. A school in Idaho has banned iPods:
Instead of crib notes on tiny pieces of paper and ball point pen on the arm, students are cheating using their iPods:
Some students use iPod-compatible voice recorders to record test answers in advance and them 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 American government exams.
I can do the same thing with my cell phone. Are they banned as well? What about those Fossil watches that are Palm devices? Data storage is getting smaller and smaller. Can they ban EVERYTHING? In the end, you can’t fight the technology:
“Trying to fight the technology without a dialogue on values and expectations is a losing battle,” Dodd said. “I think there’s kind of a backdoor benefit here. As teachers are thinking about how technology has corrupted, they’re also thinking about ways it can be used productively.”
More and more, we are becoming a society that has mountains of information at our fingertips. I don’t know if teaching children that they have to memorize everything is such a good idea. A more important skill is to know HOW to find information from reliable sources. It’s also important to know WHICH information to take with you when space is limited. Tests that make kids regurgitate dates and concepts are the problem, not the fact that a mere 1GB iPod Nano could store all the information a high school student could ever have on a test.
Stay tuned for Monday’s entry: How To Cheat With Your iPod