Teach42

I’m trying to think as a “regular teacher” here, because as an orchestra director, my assessments are almost always performance-based (whether they can play scales, excerpts of their concert music, audition pieces, etc). The only times I give a written assignment are for 1.state-mandated writing samples or 2.to find weaknesses in music reading/theory. My students realize that the written assessments are to help them, and that cheating will only hurt them (and their grades) when it comes time to test their playing abilities later on.

What an excellent example of student creativity. It was refreshing to see the L.A. Times perspective that we need to rethink testing.
No “snort” from me, Steve, just a few chuckles. Thanks.

So to all those fearful people…where do they think we get these ideas about cheating or firewalls or proxies anyway? I get the best ideas from those labeled as students…

Perhaps when we start spending more time teaching students how to learn, instead of teaching them (mostly outdated) facts, the incentive to cheat will diminish. As Robert pointed out above, performance-based learning lessens the need to cheat (although I’m sure we’ll see “doping” of some sort in High School band competitions in the future! *grin*). When the emphasis shifts from “here is the information you need to Get By In Life, and I, the Gatekeeper of Knowledge am giving it to you” to a model of “here is a real-world scenario- now use whatever resources you can to solve the problem” then we’ll see a change in students’ attitudes toward ‘cheating’.

I find it amusing when people complain about cheating students. When they get out of school and into the Real World they’ve supposedly been prepared for, nobody cares if they ‘cheat’ to find a solution to a problem. In fact, it’s encouraged! People who are resourceful problem-solvers are in high demand. In the 18th Century (and probably well into the 19th) a person could conceivably learn all there was to learn. This has not been true for a long time, but educators really don’t get it for the most part. We need to be showing students how to utilise all the information that’s available to them at the touch of a [cellphone][computer][PDA][calculator] button. I think it’s called synthesis.

/end rant

Wow, those cheating techniques look like a lot of work. All that looking things up, then putting it all into a small format, and you don’t know what will be asked to you gotta fit everything in there. Sounds like. . . studying.

I found this entry to be especially interesting in light of current trends in society and within the field education (away from content and toward collaboration). As long as we emphasize the importance of content cheating will always be there. However, if we simply see content as a way of getting to deeper understandings and application of content in the form of collaboration and creative pursuits then cheating (in the traditional sense) will become a nonissue.

[…] real solution here is as complicated as the one for cheating. Would it be easier to educate all the teachers about all the Web so they can educate all the […]

[…] I’m so fed up with these arguments. Paper clips are a distraction. Spiral notebooks are a distraction. And as we’ve seen recently, students certainly do NOT need a cell phone to cheat on an exam. […]