"Sexting" and cheating

[Lola Alapo]

How would you handle it if you found out your son or daughter was using a cell phone to cheat on an exam or send nude photos? how do you think it should be handled?

[Lola Alapo]

By the way, "sexting" is an issue where teens send naked or partially naked photos of themselves via cellphone or post them on the web.

[Darlene Hunter]

Personally, if I am paying for the cell phone service, I think I would want to take it away from my child. At the very least I would block the phone from all texting and sending/receiving pics capabilities. I would also insitst my child turn themself in for cheating and face the consequences.

[Doug McCaughan]

John C. Dvorak says encourage them to cheat!

[Vic Spencer]

I am with Darlene and Doug on Dvorak's suggestions/conclusions. We need more motivation of students in schools - and we need a lot more guidance by parents about ethics and good behavior. Sadly I just witnessed a parent chewing out a principal for some well deserved discipline on her dear boy who misbehaved. I would be for strict punishments for these behaviors and take away the phones. Kids got along fine without cellphones for a long time.

[Doug McCaughan]

I think you missed Dvorak's suggestion. He says "let them cheat" and I agree. The world has changed and our school system has fallen behind. We do not succeed in a vacuum. We succeed in collaboration. Asking students to create yet another "unique" rewrite of the same overused library books as their own research paper is simply issuing them changes to creatively restructure sentences in such a way that makes Googling for the source difficult. Instead let the student buy an already written essay for $2 on ebay and reproduce it in its entirety and have the student add paragraphs and pages of their personal commentary, possibly supported by other references directly copied from the Internet or books. Let them mashup a bunch of sources to create their own version. It would be more fun and I bet they'd learn more.

This approach would teach the students the value of opensource, collaboration, and creative commons. This approach more closely resembles the office and professional environment where we work with teams to create end products and in particular, presentations. This approach is similar to the new way information is written and consumed in blogs.

Students need to learn to be researchers and research has moved from the library we knew to the Internet. The students must be taught to validate sources and recognize when something is not legitimate. How do we do that by banning the Internet? The cell phones should be allowed to surf the Internet, SMS each other, SMS teachers, and SMS outside of the school to other sources.

For years I've heard people say "we need computers in the schools" and now that our students are walking into the schools with computers in their pockets, that are more powerful than the computers we professional programmers learned our trade on, we want o ban them. That's the stuff of fear, fear of technology, fear of change. Instead of banning the sell phones, we should be encouraging their use. If we taught cell phone usage in the classroom, perhaps we have am impact of lessening the number of naked pictures sent between teenagers.

Dean Shareski shares some of his discoveries in Exploring Cellphones as Learning Tools.

• Engagement. ...the cellphone novelty will soon pass, the engagement was with the ideas and sharing. Students ... simply used them to share ideas, pictures, sounds and videos. ...
• Responsibility. Clearly posted on the wall were a set of guidelines developed by the students and their teacher on how to use this tool wisely. Discussions of etiquette, manners, privacy and safety led them to their common understandings. ...
• Innovation and Problem Solving. Students discovered their phones were also organizers, voice recorders, and multimedia creators. They discovered bluetooth was a great way to share files, they created concise summaries of their group discussions using voice memos or videos.
• Teacher as a Learner. Carla says she still can’t "T9" like her students, but she’s learning. ... She texts her students in the morning to remind them of homework and they actually respond. That in itself is one positive outcome already.

[Source, Exploring Cellphones as Learning Tools, Ideas and Thoughts, Feb 5, 2008]

[Vic Spencer]

I would not encourage cheating. I would punish it. However, it would be useful to have research projects -- that's a different matter Doug.

[Doug McCaughan]

Perhaps we need to better define the word "cheating" I am not in favor of letting other people do the work for you. That would be giving a man a fish.

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for life.

However, I believe that we have entered a new era of information consumption that has outpaced what our schools teach. Our teaching methods must catch up!

If I asked an older person for an address to a business, they might reach for the yellow pages. If that person were tech savvy they might go directly to Google Maps. People, particularly younger ones, tethered to their phones will simply send an SMS (text) message to 46645 and in less time than it takes to ask a 411 operator for the number and address it magically appears on the phone and can be saved into your phones address book.

Our children are connected to information in ways we never could have been. They don't have to memorize information and retain it. They simply have to know how to find it. This generation need not be a generation of memorization machines; they need to be a generation of researchers. We must incorporate the cell phone into the curriculum instead of banning cell phones.

[Darlene Hunter]

I love the saying and agree. I also agree on research. Research today is done much differently than in our day. I will not advocate for using the screen of a cell phone for that web based research. All three of my daughters have cell phones and texting is their way of communicating with their friends. Old fashioned phone calls are almost non existent. However, excessive use of this small screen, combined with not wearing ones reading glasses, makes for vision problems. My eldest daughter spends so much time going back and forth from a tv screen, her cell, to her computer that her poor pupils can no long adjust to the changes. At the age of 18 her eye doctor prescribed bifocals! Since she is now an "adult" this is now her problem to deal with.

I think the real context of cheating with cell phones was meant the passing of answers from one cell to another. No matter how you look at that, it is wrong.

[Debi]

If my kids ever cheat in school and are aware of what they are doing as cheating, I would hope my child would be punished by the school with my input so I could follow through with punishment at home. What I would not want is a note coming home asking for my signature after the fact. I would want a phone call and to be invited in to discuss the issue with administration and how they would want to enact the punishment with an invitation on my thoughts and a mutual agreement as to us being a team on inacting it.

As to the nude photos, it freaks me out way too much to know how to handle it! I'm simply not ready for puberty! ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

[Doug McCaughan]

That's an awful lot of resources being spent. You have the teacher spending time to catch the child cheating. Now that teacher has to take time away from the teaching to write a note, and schedule a meeting, and make a phone call (perhaps multiple phone calls after swapping voicemails). A meeting often involves multiple staff members so now more phone calls have to be made and more people pulled away from planning, grading and/or teaching. Then there is the time in the actual meeting which includes your time driving to the school. The agreement would have to include followup time which is more time away from teaching and other positive duties. And finally, there is the time you are spending at home enforcing a negative punishment.

None of that changes the fact that your child found the answer. Not the right way, but they found the answer. Instead of all the wasted resources, perhaps a first time offender would be better served with a positive conversation with just the teacher. A conversation in which his resourcefulness could be complimented and the negative implications of his cheating could be discussed. Children have far better capability of understanding long term consequences than we give them credit for. A teacher who explains that cheating is wrong, and offers help to the child may have a far more positive impact on the child in the long run. After all, why was the child cheating? Perhaps the concepts weren't learned. Negative punishment won't fix that. But a caring teacher who asks "were you cheating because you need more help?" may create an opportunity for tutoring and furthering that child's education in a positive way.

[Paula]

interesting idea! or maybe have the teacher download a paper and say here you guys correct it..growing up in a family of teachers I can attest to the fact that a teacher knows when a student is cheating maybe not a 100% of the time but over all yes they do know. Teachers see a kid's work and know what that child is capable (or not as the case may be)

[Debi]

Na, a meeting doesn't have to be a such a big deal. All it takes is a teacher & parent or principal & parent. If we are going to be a team with the schools, then we need to be treated as a team. As I said, this is my preference, I don't consider going to a meeting for my child's punishment to be too much time to take, I consider it needed time to find.

I'm not talking about finding answers being wrong, or not understanding reference rules, I'm talking about deliberately stepping out of an ethical boundary & knowing what they are doing is ethically wrong and still doing it as needing punishment.

I have seen on the college level an adult cheat because he knew he couldn't pass without cheating. He knew it was wrong because he hid what he was doing and lied when caught. Now he has been kicked out of his college, will likely never get to attain his professional desire, and has further troubles as a workplace was funding his education and they look very poorly on this sort of behavior.

Negative consequences happen in the real world, the sooner a person realizes that, the better. I'm not saying always negative, but never giving negative sets up future citizens with a less than real concept of life.