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Norway Trying Out Laptops For High School Exams
The BBC reports that Norway is experimenting with a system that would let secondary school students take their school exams on laptop computers. According to the article, using computers for exams isn't new there, but it's been on fixed machines rather than personal computers that the students can take with them and use for other purposes throughout the school day. Having suffered through three years of exams taken on the awful SoftTest (inflexible, single-platform, ugly, buggy), I hope they do a better job — this is something that is all too easy to get wrong.
Norway is being very lenient compared to what we have to do when we take standardized tests here in the US.
When it's test taking time; your pockets must be empty of virtually anything and the only items your allowed to have are a #2 pencil and scrap paper. If these rules are violated, it could end up in not just you, but your entire class retaking the test. There are also very strict rules when it comes to seating and going to the bathroom during standardized tests (In general, it's just a big pain in the ass). Kudos to Norway for trying something new.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Ironically though here at the University of Oslo (capital of Norway) we use pen and paper to do our exams on object oriented java programming (yes, we write code by hand...with a pen...)
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This will be a real money-saver, because paper is becoming very expensive.
"I've been through this school-system and I'm no big fan. What usually happens is that it almost impossible to fail an exam, and there is very hard to get a good mark. ( a celebration of mediocracy )"
I beg to differ, regular non-open book exams don't test much of anything. They test how well you can binge and purge and not much else.
The whole exam mindset is flawed IMHO, what students need is ways to integrate and practically apply what they are learning to what they are doing so they DO remember it not just as something taught out of a book, but the can actually go about using it when they want to do something.