High Tech Cheating in Schools

<p>Cheating has been around as long as tests and grades, but a new article in USAToday details some of the high-tech exploits some are using:
- replacing the label on a soft drink bottle with one that contains answers in the fine print
- wireless earbuds that let a friend provide answers
- using cellphones for storing answers, texting friends, etc. (not all that high tech, I guess, but it wasn't happening a decade ago)</p>

<p>Article: eCheating:</a> Students using high-tech tricks ? USATODAY.com</p>

<p>Are students using new, high-tech cheating methods at your school?</p>

<p>Seems like it’s getting to a point where studying would take less effort.</p>

<p>I told a student to remove his earphones during a test and you wouldh ave thought I asked him to stand on his head. This semester, I caught seven students cheating–an all-time high for me. It is disheartening.</p>

<p>Yeah, at our school’s PSAT test, we weren’t allowed to bring in bottles because that’s what people were doing with them.</p>

<p>Probably, I’m just not aware of them. Honestly, if you have to cheat in high school, it’s pretty sad. The material is never that difficult that you couldn’t study at least a little and get decent scores on tests.</p>

<p>Honestly, none of these are particularly high tech. For all of our finals and midterms (since I was an eighth grader- now a senior), we have to remove all labels from water bottles and such. I can’t imagine the advantage to having a friend speak to you would be particularly large, especially since the test taker cannot speak or ask questions of the friend. For cellphones, as long as a teacher stands in the back of the room and not the front, it’s nearly impossible to use them. </p>

<p>If I think about the kinds of tests I normally take in high school now, none of them are pure memorization stuff. It’s more essay writing, AP gov or econ multiple choice that, if one attempted to cheat and look up answers, would most definitely run out of time, and math and science problems that involve way more thinking than anything else. Sharing answers would be the most effective form of cheating, and high-tech stuff won’t help much with that yet.</p>

<p>I’ve heard of stories around school about kids stealing the actual tests, doing it outside of class, and then switching it w/ the test given to them on test day.</p>

<p>Ummm. I find it easier to just take pictures of notes on my cell phone or ask someone the answer. I’d never go through the trouble of putting audio on my iPod or replacing my water’s label. I don’t anyone who would either. Oh and what @silkmilk said is pretty common too.</p>

<p>At my school, many kids find online test banks which certain teachers seem to use for their tests. Also, I think smartphones are the real ‘high tech’ cheating with 3g/4g… you can find anything out on the internet</p>

<p>I still think that teachers should have cell phone blocking in classrooms for tests.</p>

<p>But in all honesty, if kids are going to cheat, they will find a way to do it with or without technology.</p>

<p>During my chem final, the girl who sat in front of me cheated. She had all of the formulas written inside of her granola bar wrapper.</p>

<p>there was a post on 9gag about getting a wrist iPod nano holder, which looks like you’ve got a watch. then taking pics of info and reading it form the nano. If the teacher comes turn on the clock function to make it look like a watch.</p>

<p>What a waste of effort. Especially for math/science classes, what is the point of cheating on an exam to get a few extra points? If you don’t build a proper foundation you’re going to get crushed when you go to more advanced classes or college where it’s more difficult to cheat.</p>

<p>High school, AP classes or no, are far too easy to require cheating. Cheating is wrong, of course, but I don’t understand why people even need to cheat much less why they would want to.</p>

<p>I work at a college bookstore, and one day my boss found a mechanical pencil with a little piece of paper rolled into the base of it. If you stared at the pencil closely enough, you could see all the answers to a humanities final on the paper! </p>

<p>It was crazy, and it took my boss half an hour to get over how students are finding all these different ways to cheat.</p>

<p>^^
I don’t think all high school classes are that easy if you go to a difficult school, but any test that a cheat sheet would help a great deal is a pretty darn easy test.</p>

<p>About the difficulty of high schools - it all changes from high school to high school. I go to an extremely competitive public school (top 3 in the state) and the future valedictorian and salutatorian are in my apush class. We just had a test, the future #1 got a 91 and the future #2 got an 88. I know the #1 got one question wrong on his PSAT, which put him at a 235 cause the PSAT scoring is weird I think, and the #2 did nearly as well. After the test they both complained about how hard it was, I agreed (I got a 79 on it :P). Likewise, our AP Calc and AP Bio classes are just about as challenging. Granted, this was one of the harder apush tests, but it is a difficult class nonetheless. </p>

<p>Also, here on CC when I look through chance threads, sometimes I see people ranked 1 in their school with scores like 2050 on the SAT or 30 on the ACT. While I’m not saying these people are dumb, they surely aren’t the cream of the crop. With minimal studying, most #1s should be able to get 2150+ SAT or 32+ ACT. That said, the #1 at one school could be the 20 at another, and vice versa.</p>

<p>Sorry for the rambling!</p>

<p>My high school is so stressful and a lot of the kids compete with each other over grqades. All the teachers say their classes are like college course and everyone tries to find ways to cheat so they can get into Ivie. I hate seeing that happen but it will never end.</p>

<p>I also go to a highly competitive school (30+ national merit scholars, etc) and I have heard of people cheating but I don’t understand why - studying seems to be more time effective.</p>

<p>studying is actually more time effective and can be fun if you study in a group in library or on webcams</p>