As a teacher controlling the kids during the exam is a pretty hard thing to do. They are very creative in finding new ways of hiding their notes, that school teachers may not be aware of. Remember banning the baseball caps, because the answers where written under the brim, it looks like the new phenomenon includes media players like iPods or Zunes as a cheating method. If you are familiar with them you will understand that it’s very easy to slip it into your pants and hide the wire under your shirt, the only thing that could give you in being the earbud.

Cheating the exams will NEVER stop, trust me, because even naked the students will find a way to hide their valuable informations. However media players are easy to cheat with. You record your lesson and name it like a popular song on your PMP and then you go to school where you need only a few minutes to start writing from the audio file. Too bad that when I did school we only had to find places to hide our crib notes. Not easy at all.

Mountain View High School was the first to ban the media players in school, when the school’s officials realized students were putting formulas onto their devices. If you think that many teachers from the older generations have a problem with technology (they don’t think of it as useful) it looks like a great way for them to protect the test’s accuracy. The Mountain View HS will not be the only one to take this kind of measures. Schools in Seattle, Wash also have a problem with media players. Similar cases can be found outside the United States, like Canada’s St. Mary’s College where cellphones and PMPs were banned this year or Australia’s University of Tasmania where iPods, electronic dictionary, CD players and spell-checking devices are all prohibited.

Cases at the Duke University in North Carolina that offered free iPods three years ago, part of an experiment to enhance learning, might be reasons for people not trying to cheat, with cheating incidents declining the last 10 years. “As teachers are thinking about how technology has corrupted, they’re also thinking about ways it can be used productively” said Tim Dodd, executive director of The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University. - ALEX ION

Filed under Portable Media, iPod