My friend Chuck has been volunteering at one of the Portland high schools for some years. He thus has regular contact with the younger members of Gen-Y (sociologists consider Gen-Y to extend from 1980 to about 1994). On a number of occasions, Chuck has told me that he often catches students using text messaging to cheat on exams. He once even asked me where he buy a device to jam mobile phone communications (I told him that it would be a bad idea for the school to buy jammers because they are illegal).

Recently, I was talking to another friend, Jerry, and Jerry had a very different take on the situation. He said that these kids might not even think that they are cheating because they have grown up in an environment where information is easy to find. To them, the idea of having to memorize facts seems unnecessary.

I told Jerry that although I couldn't excuse the students' use of text messaging during exams, I thought that he was onto something about the cultural difference between Gen-Y compared to Gen-X and older people as a result of Gen-Y having grown up around the World Wide Web and search engines. However, I asked, do these Gen-Yers understand the information that they find and can they use it effectively?

The above discussion provided some food for thought, although I can't say that I fully understand the Gen-Y perspective and values.

Alfredo_t writes:
Recently, I was talking to another friend, Jerry, and Jerry had a very different take on the situation. He said that these kids might not even think that they are cheating because they have grown up in an environment where information is easy to find. To them, the idea of having to memorize facts seems unnecessary.

Well, reluctant students have always found it "unnecessary" to "memorize facts" - that's nothing new. In the 1950s you could just look stuff up in an encyclopedia; many families in that era had a full set of encyclopedias at home. The fact that you can now Google it doesn't change the point of learning. The point of teaching facts isn't so that students will "memorize" them but rather to understand and learn. Testing a memorization of the facts is a way to test how much the students have learned in a class.

So you can go tell Jerry that his grandparents had the same excuse for being lazy back in the 1950s, with different technology.

Andrew

Thanks for the perspective, Andrew. I should have said something like, "Chuck and the teachers want the students to learn the information, not just memorize it." The irony is that Jerry is in his early 80s, and his eldest daughter was born in the late 1950s! I wonder how he looked at things back then, when the future of his own daughters was at stake.

Certain things you should know, a few are
our revolution, and who the key players were.

Our Civil war, issues and key players.

Expansion of the US in the late 1800's and issues.

WW1, great depression, WWII.

Korea, beginning of the space program, Vietnam

Civil rights movement.

?!?

I share Andrew's view, BTW. Tech is there for reference, and that's good. It is, however, no substitute for getting the core facts down initially.

Passively blocking signals is not illegal.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2461

Actively blocking signals in the U.S. may be illegal, but is going on in restaurants, universities, etc. and the FCC just doesn't have the manpower to enforce this rule, based in the Communications Act of 1934 and never updated.

http://www.slate.com/id/2092059/

I can't help but recall that the most difficult tests I ever had to deal with as an engineering student were open book anyway.

A good professor can devise test questions that just can't be found. Not online, not in fraternity archives, not anywhere.
Lazy professors would archive their old tests and recycle the problems every couple of years. The challenge to the student is to know whether the professor is prone to repeating old test questions or not. In high school, the way around this kind of cheating is simple: Oral tests. It would be tough to implement this on hour tests and finals, but on just a couple of occasions per semester/term/quarter the instructor would have to be zealous about patrolling the aisles. These days they have teachers aides that could help. I think a bigger problem for the youth today is understanding what information is inaccurate, as you said.

But what happens if a restraunt operates a jammer, and a customer misses a very important phone call, child has a medical emergency, etc.
Can you spell law suit?

"Can you spell law suit?"

It appears you can't spell lawsuit.

Folks, you just can't make this stuff up.

What happens?

They miss the call. If it's really absolutely that important, they should be verifying their electronic device is connected, should they miss that call.

Since that happens, and there is a set expectation that it can happen, then they need to act aware of those expectations.

Walk into building, "oh, no signal", walk out, done.

Might be fodder for litigation, might not, all depends. Plenty of structures inhibit portable electronics on a passive basis. Again, that's where the expectation comes from.

Running an active jammer would be illegal of course, but I know I wouldn't miss a call because of one. At least I wouldn't miss the kinds of calls being tossed about here.

My favorite move along these lines is people ignoring people trying to do business and be on the phone at the same time. Saw it in a small market just the other day. The guy comes up, fumbles around, yakking to whoever, waits, waits some more... gets pissed and says something. The proprietor, points to his "we reserve the right to refuse service sign, then the phone, and says nothing! Just deadpans the whole thing.

The phone guy hung up, said "sorry" and got his transaction done.

Nice!

Lawsuit? I think that depends on whether the customer were sophisticated enough to figure out and be able to prove that a jamming device was in operation. Digital signals make it difficult to tell that jamming is taking place because there aren't any telltale interference sounds that the person using the phone can hear. Instead, the call just gets dropped (or your WiFi loses its connection).

Exactly.

IMHO, some of the only clues would be very consistent area, time and place. If it were full time, and fairly well constrained, that might be suspect. Might also be suspect if it happened during specific times.

Most people would just say, "oh, no signal" and make their choices accordingly.

Go to the Mia Ham Nike building some time. It's mostly metal, and very little works in there. Totally passive and quite effective. Great example of a building where stuff just does not work in a lot of places.

An additional piece of advice on phone jammers that I gave to my friend Chuck, in a hush-hush way was: If the teacher is desperate enough about the cheating, then (s)he should just get one of the low-cost pocket sized jammers. Then, as the teacher walks up and down the aisles during test time, students' phones will mysteriously stop working, making things very frustrating for the cheaters.

http://www.globalgadgetuk.com/Personal.htm

Reputable company. Don't ask me how I know.

Not illegal to own one of these units. Illegal to use in certain areas. That's all I'll say. See a lawyer.

It is illegal to intentionally interfere with radio signals.

An excerpt from the FCC web site www.fcc.gov.

The operation of transmitters designed to jam or block wireless communications is a violation of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended ("Act"). See 47 U.S.C. Sections 301, 302a, 333. The Act prohibits any person from willfully or maliciously interfering with the radio communications of any station licensed or authorized under the Act or operated by the U.S. government. 47 U.S.C. Section 333. The manufacture, importation, sale or offer for sale, including advertising, of devices designed to block or jam wireless transmissions is prohibited. 47 U.S.C. Section 302a(b). Parties in violation of these provisions may be subject to the penalties set out in 47 U.S.C. Sections 501-510. Fines for a first offense can range as high as $11,000 for each violation or imprisonment for up to one year, and the device used may also be seized and forfeited to the U.S. government.

Your lawyer can explain how and where you can get around this.