How Kids Use IPhones to Cheat at School (and How to Make It Smarter)
This TikTok video went viral recently . In it, a student in the lecture hall uses Apple’s new Live Text feature to take a photo of another student’s laptop screen, then converts the image to text, saves it, and thus “steals” the other student’s notes.
While news organizations from Newsweek to the New York Post publish headlines that characterize the video as a student “scam,” it looks more like a cool new feature used in the wild than anything super-unethical. We don’t know if the student got the permission of the recorder on the video, but even if they didn’t, it’s not cheating in the same way as smuggling test answers or paying someone on some crappy website to write your article. in biology is cheating.
If you miss a lecture, borrowing and copying someone else’s notes is not a scam, and it would not be a scam to record a lecture and then run it through the speech-to-text application that comes with any word processing program. So I’m not sure what the matter is.
How kids cheat with their smartphones
The survey, conducted McAafee in 2017, showed that almost a third of teenagers cheating in school using their smartphones, and it was at a time when everyone in the school attended in person. (Distance learning offers a golden set of options for deception too broad to get here.)
In the study, fraudulent students reported that they used their phones to search the Internet for answers, send text messages to a (supposedly smarter) friend, take pictures and sneak glances at notes during tests, and take pictures of test questions to circulate to their friends. account friends who take the test later in the day.
This app, Photomath , is a great example of the benefits that phones can bring to cheaters. It allows users to take a photo of a math problem, gives you a solution, and tells you what steps to take to solve it. It is a great help for learning math, as is the best version of typing answers at the end of the tutorial, but it can also be used as a great cheating device.
However, the limitations of the cell phone as a means of deception seem to outweigh the benefits. In particular, you are more likely to get caught.
In defense of a humble cheat sheet
I may be old-fashioned, but I find that a simple cheat sheet (or writing answers in the palm of your hand) is a better cheating tool than a telephone. Using a mobile phone during a test is like a billboard that says “I’m cheating.” I have to trust that everyone but the most jaded teachers will notice the kid pulling out his iPhone during the history quiz, and trust me, they know exactly who to watch.
The phones are big. They emit light and possibly sound. They cannot be crumpled into a tiny ball and palm. They can’t becombined with a water bottle for a really sophisticated system of deception , they can’t be swallowed like a cheat sheet, or quickly erased like “hand-written notes” to get rid of evidence. Advantage: Old school.
Special case for calculators
I have heard that calculators are often allowed to be used during exams in advanced mathematics courses, which I have avoided during my academic career. These calculators, I have heard, may contain zipped files that will not be deleted even if an experienced math teacher erases the calculator’s RAM before the final. There is an interesting discussion of this on Reddit that you can consult if applicable to you, Nerdlinger.
Headphone tolerance
One big advantage cell phones have over cheat sheets is headphones. Headphones are like a cheater’s dream. If you have long enough hair, you can tuck the earpiece in one ear and play a continuous sound cycle of responses to your test without anyone ever suspecting. But for this you need to think ahead.
Like cheating water bottle labels and all other sophisticated methods of cheating, I suspect that “headphone cheating” is more of an urban legend than a widespread practice, mainly because it will take a lot of preparation. You will need to write down how you read the answers to the test, presumably in the correct order, make sure the soundtrack plays in a loop, style your hair to cover it, and act nonchalantly. But when you understand the material enough to write it down, and you are prepared enough to try to pull it off, you could just study.
Are children really cleverly deceiving?
I suspect that most kids who cheat are the opposite of the type who comes up with complex schemes. These are the ones who are unprepared, missed a test day, or worked a long shift the night before, and now they are embarrassed that they are not ready and just want to find a way not to bring another D-minus home. My guess is that looking at a child’s paper next to you is far more common than any more sophisticated method of deception.