- Students who cheat on exams are going high-tech, and
teachers say they're almost certainly getting away with it.
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- "We know because of the technology it is happening
and we're just not catching it," said Jacquie Moon, a social studies
and home economics teacher at Prince of Wales Secondary in Vancouver.
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- Moon, 35, who is studying high-tech cheating for her
University of B.C. master's degree, says Palm Pilots, graphing calculators
and camera cellphones are the modern-day equivalents of note passing.
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- "You can even take a picture of your exam with the
phone and send it to someone else and they'll immediately have the test."
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- And, she said, high-tech cheats are hard to find for
some teachers who are still baffled by simple computer functions, let alone
cutting-edge wireless technology.
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- High schools are in the middle of exams, with provincial
tests beginning June 21.
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- At Fleetwood Park Secondary in Surrey, science teacher
Dean Nociar said he patrols his classroom looking for cheats by watching
for tapping fingers and electronic beeps.
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- "It's a real problem with exams," he said.
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- "You're watching very closely and I would have no
idea what gets through. But some do. It's a serious problem, but I don't
know if we even know how serious it is."
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- One solution is to change the structure of tests rather
than disable the technology, said David Vogt, a professor of new media
at UBC.
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- "Students have always been extremely adept at cheating,"
he said.
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- "If you concentrate heavily on the technology, and
the kids then go back to passing notes, you're not solving the problem."
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- In the Lower Mainland, almost every second student has
a cellphone and 46 per cent use text messaging, according to research by
Vancouver-based Alias Marketing.
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- Students can instantly send small photos or 160-character
messages to each other by phone.
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- Powerful new graphing calculators, required for some
senior science classes, store pages of text and formulas, and some can
be linked via infrared.
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- PDAs contain basic copies of Windows, e-mail and instant-messaging
features.
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- "I've been in a class where my friend's friend from
a different school was text-messaging him to get an answer," said
Grade 12 Vancouver student Lindsay Chan-Kent, 18.
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- "But it's kind of sketchy; when you're typing in
things on your phone it makes noises, or you're bending over typing stuff
and then the teacher gets kind of suspicious."
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- In 2002, the University of Maryland accused 12 students
of text-messaging answers during fall finals.
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- The Vancouver and Surrey school boards said they are
unaware of the problem.
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- © The Vancouver Province 2004 http://www.canada.com/vancouver/theprovince/news/story.ht
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