Let them cheat!

[Doug McCaughan]

Fear new ways

Knoxnews published an article today that can be summed up as "Oh no! That's not how I learned as a child. Fear the cellphone!" My reply:

If this is cheating, then let them cheat!

Our children are in an information revolution. The education system has failed to keep up with the wealth of information at our children's disposal via technology. The cellphone should not be looked upon as a device for cheating but instead see it as a reference library within the palm of their hands. Our children have the opportunity to consume information and learn at an unprecedented rate. We must give them access to the information!

What we had to learn by scheduling time to go to a library, tediously search through a card catalog, looking up in book or microfishe if it was available, they can do in seconds with their cellphone while simultaneously doing another task. Our schools should be about preparing them for their future not anchoring them to our past. Why force them to rely on printed material that is out of date when they can access constantly updating, current information by their phones?

I predict that within 5 years we will begin phasing out text books in favor of always connected e-readers similar to the Kindle. Within 10 years schools will no longer have paper text books.

Cheaters will cheat. The technology is not the problem there. That's an issue of morals which are taught to the children by the adult influences in their lives...the parents, the scout leaders, the churches, the friends. If you are concerned about your child cheating, look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are setting the right example.

Where is your library?

When we went to school, we had to memorize because the information was not readily available to us. We could not carry around encyclopedias in our pockets. Our children carry encyclopedias in their pockets. This should scream teach them differently! We were reguritaters. They are researchers. They need lateral thinking skills, problem solving skills, and logic skills. Teach these children how to formulate a decent boolean search string so they can rapidly find the information and know what to do with it.

The future is now

I am not suggesting to eliminate memorization. We still have to develop and exercise the mind. But lighten up on some memorization in acceptance that our children are and always will be connected. I doubt that our children will ever be more than 10 feet away from a connected device as an adult. That's no exaggeration. Examine your own life now. Our shoes communicate to our iPods. New cars are coming connected to the Internet. Airlines now provide Internet connectivity in flight. When I hiked 19 miles along the Cumberland Gap Trail with a bunch of scouts last year, I was never without a strong phone and Internet signal.

Lame excuses

I tire of the argument that all children do not have cellphones. When I was in school, in many cases we had to share resources from scissors to dissection subjects. Let them pass their cellphones around to each other. These children are collaborative. Adults complain of texting as if it is pointless. The texting connects the children to each other giving them a group mind. It is not cheating to reach out to people with the knowledge if the exercise is to apply the knowledge. Adopt our teaching methods to the available technology. Teach our children to work as think tanks and teams. No one succeeds in a vacuum.

Schools already encourage cheating

John C. Dvorak argues that today's schools systems are:

1. Designed for cheating
2. Encourage and even demand cheating
3. Reward cheating

Dvorak addresses that plagiarism is handled wrong:

The Internet should be a tool for helping students write papers. Children should be encouraged to rip text from sources and put it into their papers. But it should all be accounted for with simple citations. Lift whatever you want and tell the teacher where it came from, then comment on it—just as a blog post would. I'd even encourage kids to buy term papers online and add them to their own papers, with a critique of the bought item. "In this paper, which is sold on the Internet to students for $2, the author claims that the war was planned in secret. This contradicts the account cited in Wikipedia…." Or whatever. [Source, PCMag, Liars, Cheaters, and Thieves]

John C Dvorak and I agree that education should be taken to the next level:

Why are today's students forced to perform with 19th-century methodologies? Why do they have to write essays at all? Why can't they produce a PowerPoint presentation? Or create a video? Or a podcast? [Source, PCMag, Liars, Cheaters, and Thieves]

Very recently I argued for teaching cellphones and Mark Cruthers has posted about integrating technology into the classroom.

[wilma mc]

Is it possible for the teachers who don't like technology to team teach or swap lessons and record-keeping tasks with the teachers who embrace it? Instead of saying, I don't "do" e-mail, couldn't teachers have e-mail sent to someone who will print it for them?

I can't speak to what goes on in elementary schools or middle schools, but in my high school, that kind of thing is already going on. In my department there is quite a bit of collaboration among teachers, and that has helped some of them who have been slower to embrace technology to move towards catching up.In my department (which is really the only group that I can speak about with sufficient knowledge) email skills are mandatory, so we don't have anyone who "doesn't do email."

There are some things (email, electronic grade book, school web page) which are essential for teachers to learn, but of course individual teachers have different learning curves.

Instead of worrying about students using cell phones at the wrong times, can't they be asked to hold them between their feet or some other such silliness during discussions and test?

As of last year, the official school policy was that cellphones were not to be seen or heard during class. I'm sure some teachers make enforcement of that policy their raison d'etre, but most teachers that I know are pretty reasonable about it. I've asked students on occasion to use their phones to do research, and I never take up a students phone simply because I see it or hear it - if it causes a problem, I remind them of the policy.

In my class, phones are only a problem if someone is using (usually texting) a phone WHEN THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE. The problem is not so much that they are using a phone, but rather that they aren't doing what they are supposed to be doing.

The problem that I see with texting at school is that it makes it extremely difficult to get many students (especially the prolific texters) to be able to concentrate and attend to what's going on in class when they are engaged in multiple, ongoing text conversations. Even when they are not in the act of sending or receiving a text message, they are thinking about what was just texted and/or anticipating what the next round of texts will bring. There were already too many distractions, and there is a strong correlation between ability to pay attention and learning.

One more thing: it is impossible for a teacher to do her/his job while trying to monitor 35 high school students as they (sometimes very cleverly) conceal their clandestine in-class phone use (whether innocent texting or not-so-innocent cheating). No matter where in the room the teacher is, the teacher can see only one side of each student (kind of like we can see only one side of the moon).When I see students looking down at their "away from me" side, I can guess that they are probably sending/receiving a text - but I can't, and won't, go chasing around the room trying to catch every student in the act of texting.

I've got to choose my battles, and most of the time I choose to focus on the day's lessons which, after all, the students are responsible for learning, even if they choose texting over paying attention.

[Vic Spencer]

Not PCs, but application software for education that the school system uses is very important for all teachers. I think it is not acceptable for any teacher to be not literate and effective with these. However, the school system should pay for teacher training and provide enough time for such teaching tools.

[Cathy McCaughan]

Unless a teacher says "you may use your cell phone for this" or they have been told something similar, students should not be sending or reading msgs. If my children are disturbing class with their phone, masking tape it to their shoe, put it on their head under a toboggan or have them hold it in their hand with their arm straight up in the air. I can come up with more. I want them to have phones so that they can always contact me, but they are not to be using them during class unless a teacher says otherwise.

[Debi]

Cathy, do you think some of the teachers saying that about email & computers would be the over 35 group? I am 38 & when I graduated high school we had the most basic computers and none in school. Well, maybe a couple teachers had them. I remember 1 course that was like 1 wk long on computers where we drew a basic house out of "X" across the screen & remember some "goto" command that would make words scroll across the screen. Don't know if that was DOS or pre-DOS. My usual digressing down memory lane aside, if you don't grow up with it, it can be challenging as an adult to catch up. Don't know that I would were it not for my family situation & hubby having a computer business. I think you & I are similar ages & obviously you're doing fine with it, but not everyone has technological curiosity.

[Cathy McCaughan]

Are you thinking of BASIC? I'm older than you and there was a computer lab in my high school for students to use. Half a dozen of us used it as a refuge from Wednesday morning chapel. At some point, students having to watch an Elvis impersonator sing gospel songs is a unique form of torture.

I think that people of all ages can use computers. I know of people in their 60s who are very skilled at using computers to communicate and learn. I suspect there are plenty of teens and 20 somethings who think computers are only for Lolcats, shopping and tacky videos. Teachers and students don't have to like computers. Students must have the skills to use computers for research and in a work setting.

[Debi]

Possibly it was BASIC. If you had a chapel, I'm guessing private school? I was at Clinton High, I do not recall a single computer lab. Maybe my memory is fading, maybe there was one at vocational school down the road. I recall one classroom with a few computers in junior high, but again it was only a few days.

I agree that people at any age can use them, just don't know that some people want to use them. If they don't want to, like all things it becomes more difficult to get them to.

[Vic Spencer]

BASIC was the first "incremental" higher level language developed at Dartmouth. It was more a college level tool to develop programs, but smart high school kids could have used it to create simple programs. There must have been some educational programs by that time written even in machine or assembler language, whose screens looked just like plain text. Programmed instruction texts have been around then, and so were some games. Back then we had minicomputers that were typically $40-100K in cost. PC's were just coming alive in the $5-10K range. What is interesting is how far we have come in 20-30 years. You will see a quadrupling of that past trend during the next 20-30 years, again with a great reduction in size and price.

I think that teaching will change as we know it. If today one can get accredited degrees more and more via the Internet, plus we have some fantastic education tools increasing in numbers like Rosetta Stone for language learning just as one example, teaching will become more like a personal guide. I saw many changes over the years and I can very clearly see some changes coming in many vocations. Debi, I saw a new Japanese robot the other day that could do some assistant nursing tasks.

[Debi]

We NEED engineering degrees online. I'm talking civil, electrical, etc. There are NONE of those available, and there are lots of people in the field who would love the opportunity but have families. UT does not offer family-friendly course work, very few night classes.

[Debi]

If you can get the assistant nursing to do bed baths, YAY!!!

[Doug McCaughan]

that paint teachers as dimwitted technophobes [Source, wilma mc]

Can you please point out specifically where I've called teachers "dimwitted" or "technophobic"?

which is not the backward, insular, techno-phobic wasteland implied [Source, wilma mc]

If I have implied anything, it is a lack of creativity in Knox County's pedagogic choices. I have 5 children in 5 different schools. I have been exposed to everything from gifted and talented classes to cdc classrooms to KAEC to PTAs. I have volunteered at multiple schools and interact with my children's friends enough to know that many of the high school students know very little about computers. I am involved parent that is neither disconnected nor disillusioned with our education system. I advocate change not because I think Knox County and its teachers do a poor job but because I see opportunity for improvement. I have one child who scores very high on TCAPs yet Knox County has trouble engaging this student because the child is an active learner (he is not alone) but instead of adopting the education environment to be more hands-on for these students KCS continues to shove worksheets at them.

I think you are hung up on this word cheating. Nobody wants the children literally cheating but we have to quit hyperfocusing on the negative and look at all the benefits. A cheater is going to cheat anyway. In cases where it really matters, have the cellphones turned in as the students walk into class or place them on the floor under their desks.

Why so negative toward bloggers? Blogging is simply electronic journaling. You can bet that if Hemingway and Dickinson were alive today they'd be blogging. Want to encourage more writing from our students? Encourage blogging.

Wilma, for some reason you seem to feel personally attacked. I appreciate most of the KCS teachers. I have personally witnessed Knox County Schools improve over this past decade. There is still room for improvement which is why we make these suggestions. No one is stereotyping teachers.

[Debi]

I think Doug is an advocate for teachers. We all know how tied the hands of teachers are in this county.

[Doug McCaughan]

Thank you Debi! If it wasn't for the heroic efforts of some wonderful Knox County teachers, my special needs child..that's a misnomer as he's barely a child anymore..would have quite possibly ended up in a group home with no diploma instead of with a regular education diploma and attending college. I appreciate our teacher's painstaking efforts, administrative challenges, resource limitations. and most of all their love and attention to our children. I know that as we encourage change to our education system that it possibly inflicts burdens upon those on the front lines, the teachers. We must continue to push our education system to the next level and that will not come with complacency. They still read Jonathan Livingston Seagull in the schools don't they?