Slashdot Mirror
TI Calculator DRM Defeated
josath writes "Texas Instruments' flagship calculator, the Nspire, was hacked to allow user-written programs earlier this year. Earlier this month, TI released an update to the OS that runs on the calculator, providing no new features, but only blocking the previous hack. Now, just a few weeks later, Nleash has been released, which defeats this protection. The battle rages on as users fight for the right to run their own software on their own hardware."
it's not fucking obligatory god damn it
"if people CAN cheat at a test, there's something wrong with the testing method. change your test, don't punish people for outsmarting the education system!"
I have grad degrees in psychology and my main focus of studies are in experiential learning and assessment of said learning.
And from a certain realistic stand point, you are right. We can't catch all the cheaters, and testing methods need to make it more fair, meaning that we need to balance things out.
That said, who the fuck has the knowledge to create system like this? I can safely say, I'm considered expendable by my university because I'm too expensive for the little work I can do. Should every instructor also be forced to take 4 years of graduate psych in order to learn how to get into students heads and figure out how to ask appropriate questions? Right now, it is near dead impossible to get teachers to ask very probing questions in the first place...but we also know that if students don't cheat -- we have a pretty good idea of what they know even with the lack of appropriateness in the testing procedures / rubric.
It is nice to claim their is a problem with the testing method, but who is going to pay for the fix? Students already complain that their schooling is costing more and more -- and a good portion of this comes from the fact that we have to go out of our ways to make things fair for those that can't follow the rules. We have to expend good monies on people because of politically correctness (some because idiot students require too much of it, some of it because idiot administrators seem to think that being forced not to be overtly biased against anyone that doesn't think like they do should be able to do so). So now you expect more. And I'm certain if you were asked if you wanted an increase in the cost of your school, you'd say no. Last year at my school, the faculty actually put out a ballot item about increasing the budget -- and said why it needed to be done, and everyone (97%) voted against it...and the same people complained that those services the budget was needed to be increased for complained that they didn't get any of this.