Do you remember in school taking that Friday spelling test and inevitably there was that kid who wrote the answers on their arm or hid the spelling words in their desk, hey maybe that kid was you. However 9 out of 10 times the kid would get caught because she or he looked oh so obvious and then the when the teacher called the student outside to talk, the whole class whispered "Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater"? Well now in the 21st century as the world evolves and everything is being googled, blogged about, or recorded and then posted on You tube; the art of cheating is also changing. Now when a students gets caught with the answers to a test its on their i-phone or being texted to them. Does this mean that the old adage of eating pumpkins will be changed to "Cheater Cheater Internet User"?
More and more teachers are trying to combat the problem of cyber-cheating and plagiarism in the classroom, but with the emergence of electronic devices that have web capability and the amazing resource that the web provides; keeping the internet out of the classroom is impossible and impractical. So how do teachers address this new problem? Well the answer lies in what a teacher considers to be cheating. As technology develops this definition is often blurred. Recently David Thornburg posted an article entitled "Cheating and the Internet Age" in it he argued that when a student uses the internet to their advantage on a test they are not really cheating but rather meeting the content standards of using technology as a resource. He further argues hat teachers must go beyond Bloom's first level of basic memorization in their tests because these types of assessments make using wikipedia to find a simple answer so appealing especially when it is just a few text messages away.
As a future teacher myself and a native to the internet age I find his outlook refreshing and in touch with the youth culture of today. Memorization, although helpful in a game of Go-fish, is becoming increasingly obsolete as the access of information via the internet is so readily avilable. For example the students of today in a hypothetical economics class might find the value of memorizing the statistics of this years Gross Domestic Product next to zero, not because its not important, but rather it is just a Google search away. What students of today would find value in, is in recognizing the impact of the decrease of our GDP and then posting their thoughts to a Live Journal account or creating a You Tube video that expresses the correlation of this fact with the Recession. If as educators we can recognize this shift in thought about testing and information then we can better accommodate our students instead of worry about if their cell phones are telling them the answer to number 13 is "A".
It is important to note however that cyber-cheating is not just relegated to finding simple answers, students are also using the internet for their papers and often are plagiarizing intentionally or unintentionally. Whether or not this is a way to meet content standards for technology is debatable. Using other peoples work and claiming it as your own is cheating no matter how you word it . Our challenge as teachers is to not find better ways of catching plagiarizers but finding creative solutions so that the option of using other peoples work is not appealing. Thornburg suggests that if a students does not want to write her or his own paper than have them grade the papers they found on the net with commentary. As educators if we are willing to create these types of options plagarizing in our classrooms will decrease. I also believe that if students know that their teacher is techno-literate and very aware of all the resources on the web for research papers and the like students will be more reluctant to use this method of teaching.
Today's teachers must recognize the value of the internet and use it to their advantage rather than view the Web as their enemy. I am of the standpoint that instead of punishing students for using their cell phones to find answers, encourage the use of technology and ask the students critical thinking questions. Student's individual thoughts are not on a Wiki page. I know that this testing takes much more time and effort and is particularly hard because of the high stakes tests that are all about recalling and repeating. But it is our duty as educators to make sure that children are getting the best possible education and this means understanding the capabilities of the Net and using them in the classroom. The internet is not the bad guy and neither are cell phones, sites that have papers for sale aren't that bad either. All of these things can be used to help our students think critically and keep them engaged. If we truly understand and embrace this fact then maybe we can keep naming calling old school and when I finally finish school and get my credential I too can hear "Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater" when I catch a kid cheating on their spelling test. Then again isn't it my duty to create tests where cheating isn't an option?
More and more teachers are trying to combat the problem of cyber-cheating and plagiarism in the classroom, but with the emergence of electronic devices that have web capability and the amazing resource that the web provides; keeping the internet out of the classroom is impossible and impractical. So how do teachers address this new problem? Well the answer lies in what a teacher considers to be cheating. As technology develops this definition is often blurred. Recently David Thornburg posted an article entitled "Cheating and the Internet Age" in it he argued that when a student uses the internet to their advantage on a test they are not really cheating but rather meeting the content standards of using technology as a resource. He further argues hat teachers must go beyond Bloom's first level of basic memorization in their tests because these types of assessments make using wikipedia to find a simple answer so appealing especially when it is just a few text messages away.
As a future teacher myself and a native to the internet age I find his outlook refreshing and in touch with the youth culture of today. Memorization, although helpful in a game of Go-fish, is becoming increasingly obsolete as the access of information via the internet is so readily avilable. For example the students of today in a hypothetical economics class might find the value of memorizing the statistics of this years Gross Domestic Product next to zero, not because its not important, but rather it is just a Google search away. What students of today would find value in, is in recognizing the impact of the decrease of our GDP and then posting their thoughts to a Live Journal account or creating a You Tube video that expresses the correlation of this fact with the Recession. If as educators we can recognize this shift in thought about testing and information then we can better accommodate our students instead of worry about if their cell phones are telling them the answer to number 13 is "A".
It is important to note however that cyber-cheating is not just relegated to finding simple answers, students are also using the internet for their papers and often are plagiarizing intentionally or unintentionally. Whether or not this is a way to meet content standards for technology is debatable. Using other peoples work and claiming it as your own is cheating no matter how you word it . Our challenge as teachers is to not find better ways of catching plagiarizers but finding creative solutions so that the option of using other peoples work is not appealing. Thornburg suggests that if a students does not want to write her or his own paper than have them grade the papers they found on the net with commentary. As educators if we are willing to create these types of options plagarizing in our classrooms will decrease. I also believe that if students know that their teacher is techno-literate and very aware of all the resources on the web for research papers and the like students will be more reluctant to use this method of teaching.
Today's teachers must recognize the value of the internet and use it to their advantage rather than view the Web as their enemy. I am of the standpoint that instead of punishing students for using their cell phones to find answers, encourage the use of technology and ask the students critical thinking questions. Student's individual thoughts are not on a Wiki page. I know that this testing takes much more time and effort and is particularly hard because of the high stakes tests that are all about recalling and repeating. But it is our duty as educators to make sure that children are getting the best possible education and this means understanding the capabilities of the Net and using them in the classroom. The internet is not the bad guy and neither are cell phones, sites that have papers for sale aren't that bad either. All of these things can be used to help our students think critically and keep them engaged. If we truly understand and embrace this fact then maybe we can keep naming calling old school and when I finally finish school and get my credential I too can hear "Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater" when I catch a kid cheating on their spelling test. Then again isn't it my duty to create tests where cheating isn't an option?
