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Ethiopia Turns Off Internet Nationwide as Students Sit Exams (theguardian.com)
Ethiopia shut down the internet yesterday ahead of a scheduled national examination that is underway in the country today. Social media users noted that the internet service was interrupted from around 7 pm on Tuesday -- reportedly to prevent exam leaks. About 1.2 million students are taking the grade 10 national exams, with another 288,000 preparing for the grade 12 university entrance exams that will take place next week. From a report: Outbound traffic from Ethiopia was shutdown around 4pm UK time on Tuesday, according to Google's transparency report, which registered Ethiopian visits to the company's sites plummeting over the evening. By Wednesday afternoon, access still had not been restored. Last year, activists leaked the papers for the country's 12th grade national exams, calling for the postponement of the papers due to a school shutdown in the regional state of Oromia. Now, the government appears to have taken the move to shut down internet access as a preventative measure.
How about they work on the correct problem? I don't think the internet spreading the leaked exams is the issue, it's that the exams are leaked...
Might as well shut down electricity in the whole country to be absolutely sure, huh? Kind of a sign of a backwards government policy (or reflecting the lack of importance of internet/connectivity) when one small problem can cause a whole other system to be shut down...
This is actually a really interesting way to solve a challenging problem (cheating). It's a little crazy, but it's a poor country. I don't completely oppose this. An education system with integrity is extremely important for a country.
People are too easily distracted by random nonsense on the internet, kids these days. Look at all the covfefe about Trump this morning. Did that add value to anyone's life? No.
More places should turn off the internet for a while. Even IoT sensors could buffer their stats until it's switched back on. I would recommend switching it off for 2-3 days in the summer and 24th-27th of December. Give people a chance to rediscover the outdoors and all of that.
It's the only way to be sure
I don't think people leaking an exam can be called "activists." This is a pretty pathetic way to try to combat this level of rampant cheating. It's really sad that such a state exists, and that they have failed to convey decent values to these students by grade 10/12. Then again, apparently cheating is also rampant in the US, where students have equally terrible values and little to no integrity.
Sounds like the real issue is that they are using the same exam all over the country. Couldn't this be fixed by simply randomizing the exam questions, changing the order (requiring people to hunt for answers even if they do manage to find a leaked copy), and changing the numeric values of questions to ensure the answers are different?
The internet is too critical a tool for society in general to shut it down even for just a day, for the sake of ensuring the validity of national student exams.
Seriously? Shut down the internet for the entire country, *just for exams*?
Sweet pterodactyl projectile diarrhea on a dreidel, how many different kinds of wrong could have gone into a decision as boneheaded as that?
Do businesses in Ethiopia not depend on the internet for anything?
for the obligatory GNAA post?
Others are shocked they have schools and the students write exams
But mostly, they are shocked there is a place called Ethiopia that is real. They assumed it was one of the imaginary kingdoms in Cecil B Demille movies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
A country that actually takes some forceful control over the natural use of how technology is implemented! Good for them!
same lame 'stories' for weeks at a time,, psychotronic hypenosys.. regardless most of us are more aware of things than we once may not have needed to be... cease fire stand down... everything made by man fails over time is no secret,,, in the moms we trust... our nearest identifiable creators.. thanks.. see you sooner or later... sing along... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLO3NmGJuHg .. 1000s per day dying from starvation daily in ethiopia, mostly kids.. been happening for decade(s) now, no mention in the article.. good sports with good spirits will prevail...
Given the state of Ethiopia the impact of such a move is significantly less that it would be in a developed nation. And education is kind of the highest priority they can have right now, they need to fix education before they can fix anything else. Illiterate populace is just no good in getting a country up and running. The few companies that actually need internet access have probably rolled their own already, sat internet or whatever.
They figured the cost was outbalanced by the upshot. Can't really blame them.
I'd be annoyed too, having to go outside and all. But that'll be the extent of it. Maybe some robotic surgeries depended on uptime?
I think the right and more humane answer, though, would be to shoot any student who brings a smartphone to the examination.
This is completely false. I know for sure, how else could its rich prince have emailed me for help on recovering the throne from the evil dictatorship?
Just pull out your local printed copy. I print one out weekly, so I have a backup of the Internet any time I need it!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If you want to prevent cheating you could disable internet at the Universities themselves with various firewall techniques.
covfefe(x) = sqrt ( 1 - vfefe(x)**2 )
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What, they can't shut down the internet just where students are taking exams?
Ban phones too?
Come on. This is an easy problem to solve.
Lovingly, in Christ Jesus.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Anybody like to discuss reality? Thought not.
People nowadays are stuck behind their little screens too much. Might be good for them to get some fresh air.
In every day life you WILL have access to internet so there is no point preventing it if you can use it as a tools in the actual practice of your job.
A decade ago I had teachers smart enough to realize this and they just made exam with that fact in mind.
Maybe that argument is wrong for ethiopa though...
It reminds me of my mother saying: well you need to be good at mental arithmetic otherwise, how will you pick the best price at grocery or any shop?
You can't always have a pocket calculator on you... (This was early '90). Yeah. And now everyone has a cellphone many thousand time more powerful that any calculator of that era. Still learned mental arithmetic but much later, for a purpose important to me.