Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:

In the old days students would try to write answers on their forearms, or pass notes back and forth… or just plain copy from other students. In this era of text messaging, cell phones with cameras, and iPods, colleges are struggling to keep up with the new breed of cheaters.

At the journalism school at San Jose State University in California, students tried to use spell checkers on their laptops when part of the exam was designed to test their ability to spell.

And at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after students photographed test questions with their cellphone cameras, transmitted them to classmates outside the exam room, and got the answers back in text messages, the university put in place a new proctoring system.

“If they’d spend as much time studying,” said an exasperated Ron Yasbin, dean of the UNLV College of Sciences, “they’d all be A students.” [Source: The New York Times via IHT]

We Say: Maybe now they’ll allow cell phone jammers in the U.S. I’ve often said it would be great to put jammers in movie theatres for those folks who don’t get the idea that most people want to watch the movie (and jammers for personal use are legal in many other countries). There are also companies that produce paint that blocks RF transmissions.

Of course, this is about more than just cell phones. Whatever happened to the old days of the Honor System?

Have comments? Want to see what others have to say about this story? Join the discussion here!

About RealTechNews
When blogs became “hot,” we looked at the category and found a gap. Tech blogs were furiously covering gadgets and gizmos and new products from Asia, and the mainstream tech sites were diligently doing product reviews and news items, but no one was really sitting in the middle and bringing the best of both worlds to one place. Enter RealTechNews (RTN). Our mission is simple: We aim to bridge the gap between the informal and mostly amateur-run tech blogs and the polished but often slow and advertiser-supported tech portals.