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It's so sad that kids with iphones aren't allowed to use phones on tests. They're being tested in an archaic context for archaic purposes. Under what circumstan

It's so sad that kids with iphones aren't allowed to use phones on tests. They're being tested in an archaic context for archaic purposes. Under what circumstances are people going to be working without internet access? School has a lot of catching up to do with the real world. :(

eurleif 13y ago
Except that standardized tests are reused, which is another difference from real life problems. In real life, you're not always solving a problem that numerous other people have already solved, and posted solutions to.
hrktb 13y ago
I think it's a shame computer like devices (iphone, ipad, what you want) are not allowed. Learning to use them efficiently in a time constrained context would be a really valuable skill. Internet access is a lot more complex though, you'd have to filter what they can access and monitor everything every student is accessing, and that doesn't seem worth it for most tests. Image a scenario where the students just throws any question on a random looking site and some hired expert on the other side writes appropriate answers on the fly. Your test won't have any meaning anymore.
- visakanv 13y ago
  In which case I think the flaw is with the test, not the student. Why does a kid need to memorize something that he can get on-the-fly expert answers from? Why memorize something you can look up? =\
  - hrktb 13y ago
    The memorizing part is where computer could be allowed. You'll still have to remember how to get the information back though. Now test are flawed by definition, you'll always have to create some artifical restriction to control what aspect you are assessing. Idealy you never test someone by putting him/her in a room with a pncil and paper, you'd assess how good the students cleared real tasks in realistic conditions.
withad 13y ago
For any field, there's always some basic knowledge that anyone studying or practicing it simply has to have if they're going to be at all effective. A well-written test should be checking that the students have acquired that knowledge (which can be much of the course content) and can apply it appropriately to problems. Anyone with an internet connection can easily find out, for example, how to add together two ints in Java. But if someone took an introductory Java course and couldn't do that at the end of it, then they don't deserve to pass because they've clearly not learned what they were supposed to. If they were actually trying to program something and had to look up basics like that every time they used them, they would be so slow as to be completely useless. Or consider someone with a more time-critical job like a surgeon - they can do specific research beforehand but some level of knowledge (surgical techniques, how to use their tools, anatomy, etc.) is simply going to have to be in their head at the moment they need it or their patient could die. Also, phones and internet access don't just provide knowledge, they're a way to communicate with everyone else in the room. If you want to see if any particular person has actually learned the material, you obviously can't allow that.
- lowboy 13y ago
  > If they were actually trying to program something and had to look up basics like that every time they used them, they would be so slow as to be completely useless Isn't that the point of timed tests? You can structure a test such that the person who needs to look up how to add two ints in Java will waste so much time that they wouldn't be able to finish the test. And if they can search for and apply this knowledge quickly enough, then maybe they've proven that they won't be slow if they have to do it in the real world. My favourite exams were open book but still hard/long enough that if you didn't already know 95% of the material, you simply wouldn't have time to complete it.
  - jbri 13y ago
    On the other hand, if you allow outside communication (such as unrestricted access to the internet), you open the door for "I'll pay someone who already knows this stuff to phone in the answers for me" - which isn't generally an applicable skill in the real world. As an aside, I hated open book exams - if you were talented and knew the material, you could typically blast through a closed-book examination in half the allotted time and get out of there, while the open-book exams were far longer and more tedious.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
What about the kids without iPhones? Are they handicapped because they can't afford one? Or is the school expected to provide hundreds of iPhones?
- visakanv 13y ago
  I'd suggest that they do what we do when we don't have the resources we need in the 'real world'- figure out some way to collaborate with others!
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    Collaborate during a test? That usually leads to cheating. It would also likely disadvantage the person they are working with who now has to share resources. Not to mention the fact that if this person doesn't own an iPhone they either won't know how to use it or won't be quick at using it slowing them down (bad in an exam situation). The students who do own iPhones will be faster and will be better because they are more experienced with the tools - not because they are better students.
    - ygra 13y ago
      Not necessarily, although it might be difficult for math tests. In school we had one larger test in German where the teacher left us alone for 4 hours. What I noticed was that we did collaborate to some extent – we shared and discussed ideas. But since we had to write an essay with our interpretation of some piece of literature there wasn't much possibility of "cheating" per se. Simply copying the text from another would not work and copying their ideas outright wouldn't either. And to get at least something of decent length there wasn't the option of fooling around for three hours either. Granted, this was in 11th grade, so we were a bit older already. It may well fail spectacularly in other environments. The teacher knew us for a few years and trusted us, and it worked out.
podperson 13y ago
When I was in college in the 80s there was an explosion of creativity in the calculator market (kind of like the TV and camera markets today -- they're all going broke and trying to come up with new killer products). One of the things that became very popular was calculators with 32kB or 64kB of RAM, a QWERTY keyboard, that ran BASIC. Anyway, I was pure math major and we could bring pretty much anything short of an actual desktop computer into exams -- it was pretty much useless. (Now, a few years later, and Mathematica running on a maxed out Mac would have been pretty darn useful.)
- dblarons 13y ago
  We were actually allowed to use Mathematica on our Linear Algebra exams this semester. I think it made the tests a lot more effective because you didn't have to go through the algebraic trouble of finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors, so the professor could focus more of the testing time on applications of those values. Having a computer in class opens the door for cheating, but in smaller classes it would be easy to tell if a student were browsing the Internet rather than finding a determinant.
nhaehnle 13y ago
Here's the thing about calculation in particular: Yes, if your ultimate goal is to perform the calculation and nothing more, you'll be able to use a tool for the job in the real world. However, many times the calculation is just a very small piece of a much larger puzzle. In such situations, being able to perform small computations rapidly in your head makes a qualitative difference that can really give you a competitive advantage.
gaius 13y ago
Just... Wow. I suppose essays are the same, cut and paste from Wikipaedia?
astrobe_ 13y ago
In my experience, if you are really prepared for an exam, you know the formulas by heart anyway. I myself passed tests designed in a way that calculators could be disallowed. Some of them even had a reminder section with all the needed formulas. But unprepared students still failed them, because they were simply not used to use them and they therefore ran out of time. This translates in the real world: knowing things by heart and their mechanic is the difference between the guy that spends one hour on a problem ans the guy who spends 10 minutes on it.

eurleif 13y ago

Except that standardized tests are reused, which is another difference from real life problems. In real life, you're not always solving a problem that numerous other people have already solved, and posted solutions to.

hrktb 13y ago

I think it's a shame computer like devices (iphone, ipad, what you want) are not allowed. Learning to use them efficiently in a time constrained context would be a really valuable skill. Internet access is a lot more complex though, you'd have to filter what they can access and monitor everything every student is accessing, and that doesn't seem worth it for most tests. Image a scenario where the students just throws any question on a random looking site and some hired expert on the other side writes appropriate answers on the fly. Your test won't have any meaning anymore.

visakanv 13y ago
In which case I think the flaw is with the test, not the student. Why does a kid need to memorize something that he can get on-the-fly expert answers from? Why memorize something you can look up? =\
- hrktb 13y ago
  The memorizing part is where computer could be allowed. You'll still have to remember how to get the information back though. Now test are flawed by definition, you'll always have to create some artifical restriction to control what aspect you are assessing. Idealy you never test someone by putting him/her in a room with a pncil and paper, you'd assess how good the students cleared real tasks in realistic conditions.

withad 13y ago

For any field, there's always some basic knowledge that anyone studying or practicing it simply has to have if they're going to be at all effective. A well-written test should be checking that the students have acquired that knowledge (which can be much of the course content) and can apply it appropriately to problems. Anyone with an internet connection can easily find out, for example, how to add together two ints in Java. But if someone took an introductory Java course and couldn't do that at the end of it, then they don't deserve to pass because they've clearly not learned what they were supposed to. If they were actually trying to program something and had to look up basics like that every time they used them, they would be so slow as to be completely useless. Or consider someone with a more time-critical job like a surgeon - they can do specific research beforehand but some level of knowledge (surgical techniques, how to use their tools, anatomy, etc.) is simply going to have to be in their head at the moment they need it or their patient could die. Also, phones and internet access don't just provide knowledge, they're a way to communicate with everyone else in the room. If you want to see if any particular person has actually learned the material, you obviously can't allow that.

lowboy 13y ago
> If they were actually trying to program something and had to look up basics like that every time they used them, they would be so slow as to be completely useless Isn't that the point of timed tests? You can structure a test such that the person who needs to look up how to add two ints in Java will waste so much time that they wouldn't be able to finish the test. And if they can search for and apply this knowledge quickly enough, then maybe they've proven that they won't be slow if they have to do it in the real world. My favourite exams were open book but still hard/long enough that if you didn't already know 95% of the material, you simply wouldn't have time to complete it.
- jbri 13y ago
  On the other hand, if you allow outside communication (such as unrestricted access to the internet), you open the door for "I'll pay someone who already knows this stuff to phone in the answers for me" - which isn't generally an applicable skill in the real world. As an aside, I hated open book exams - if you were talented and knew the material, you could typically blast through a closed-book examination in half the allotted time and get out of there, while the open-book exams were far longer and more tedious.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

What about the kids without iPhones? Are they handicapped because they can't afford one? Or is the school expected to provide hundreds of iPhones?

visakanv 13y ago
I'd suggest that they do what we do when we don't have the resources we need in the 'real world'- figure out some way to collaborate with others!
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  Collaborate during a test? That usually leads to cheating. It would also likely disadvantage the person they are working with who now has to share resources. Not to mention the fact that if this person doesn't own an iPhone they either won't know how to use it or won't be quick at using it slowing them down (bad in an exam situation). The students who do own iPhones will be faster and will be better because they are more experienced with the tools - not because they are better students.
  - ygra 13y ago
    Not necessarily, although it might be difficult for math tests. In school we had one larger test in German where the teacher left us alone for 4 hours. What I noticed was that we did collaborate to some extent – we shared and discussed ideas. But since we had to write an essay with our interpretation of some piece of literature there wasn't much possibility of "cheating" per se. Simply copying the text from another would not work and copying their ideas outright wouldn't either. And to get at least something of decent length there wasn't the option of fooling around for three hours either. Granted, this was in 11th grade, so we were a bit older already. It may well fail spectacularly in other environments. The teacher knew us for a few years and trusted us, and it worked out.

podperson 13y ago

When I was in college in the 80s there was an explosion of creativity in the calculator market (kind of like the TV and camera markets today -- they're all going broke and trying to come up with new killer products). One of the things that became very popular was calculators with 32kB or 64kB of RAM, a QWERTY keyboard, that ran BASIC. Anyway, I was pure math major and we could bring pretty much anything short of an actual desktop computer into exams -- it was pretty much useless. (Now, a few years later, and Mathematica running on a maxed out Mac would have been pretty darn useful.)

dblarons 13y ago
We were actually allowed to use Mathematica on our Linear Algebra exams this semester. I think it made the tests a lot more effective because you didn't have to go through the algebraic trouble of finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors, so the professor could focus more of the testing time on applications of those values. Having a computer in class opens the door for cheating, but in smaller classes it would be easy to tell if a student were browsing the Internet rather than finding a determinant.

nhaehnle 13y ago

Here's the thing about calculation in particular: Yes, if your ultimate goal is to perform the calculation and nothing more, you'll be able to use a tool for the job in the real world. However, many times the calculation is just a very small piece of a much larger puzzle. In such situations, being able to perform small computations rapidly in your head makes a qualitative difference that can really give you a competitive advantage.

gaius 13y ago

Just... Wow. I suppose essays are the same, cut and paste from Wikipaedia?

astrobe_ 13y ago

In my experience, if you are really prepared for an exam, you know the formulas by heart anyway. I myself passed tests designed in a way that calculators could be disallowed. Some of them even had a reminder section with all the needed formulas. But unprepared students still failed them, because they were simply not used to use them and they therefore ran out of time. This translates in the real world: knowing things by heart and their mechanic is the difference between the guy that spends one hour on a problem ans the guy who spends 10 minutes on it.