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Scottish Students Used Spellchecker Glitch To Cheat In Literacy Test (bbc.com)
Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: Schools are to be given advice on how to disable a glitch that allows pupils sitting online spelling tests to right-click their mouse and find the answer. It follows the discovery by teachers that children familiar with traditional computer spellcheckers were simply applying it to the tests. The Scottish National Standardized Assessments were introduced to assess progress in four different age groups. A spokesman said the issue was not with the Scottish National Standardized Assessments (SNSA) but with browser or device settings on some machines.
Introduced in 2017, the spelling test asks children to identify misspelt words. However, on some school computers the words were highlighted with a red line. Pupils who right-clicked on the words were then able to access the correct spelling. The web-based SNSA tool enables teachers to administer online literacy and numeracy tests for pupils in P1, P4, P7 and S3, which are marked and scored automatically. Advice is being given to schools about how to disable the spellchecking function.
Introduced in 2017, the spelling test asks children to identify misspelt words. However, on some school computers the words were highlighted with a red line. Pupils who right-clicked on the words were then able to access the correct spelling. The web-based SNSA tool enables teachers to administer online literacy and numeracy tests for pupils in P1, P4, P7 and S3, which are marked and scored automatically. Advice is being given to schools about how to disable the spellchecking function.
... suck worse at spelling than students, though.
wouldn't be too hard to detect affected browsers and deny the test .. or disable it with some clever js or images or whatnot.
Better headline: Teachers shocked to discover that students doing tests on a computer knew how to operate the computer.
shock horror someone in the education department is not very educated
In the freaking standard and supported by many browsers :
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/interaction.html#spelling-and-grammar-checking
They never tested it and I'll bet its not accessible to low vision or disabled ( alternative inputs) either...
however it is at least better than a native windows app which would lock the school into paying for Microsoft word...
They are Scottish, how could they possibly be literate?
Listen, dipshit teachers: we've already figured out how to automate all the rote tasks you mongoloid misanthropes want to drill us on.
How about teaching us the only fucking thing that matters, critical thinking and problem solving?
I mean, the fact that they're cheating on these things in such a fashion shows they're already an order of magnitude ahead of the teachers in the aforementioned.
Nor is this stuff that matters.
Embarrassing and silly, but upon reading the summary, understandable how it happened. Not worth wasting screen space for.
0) Not all written communication is mediated by electronic equipment
1) Spelling checkers do not include the full lexicon
2) The lexicon changes
3) Different dialects have different spellings, and while you may wish the enforce one dialect's spelling in your prose, any quotations should match that of the source material
etc. etc.
Were that I say, pancakes?
When everyone finally gets there, they're, and their; and it's and its, correct; then, and only then, will I agree with you.
And you know what, "long division" was already ancient when I learned it, over 50 years ago. In the grand scheme of things, 50 more years is nothing, and if it's irrelevant now, it was just as irrelevant then. Call me a dinosaur if you want, but if we take away your calculator I bet I can run rings around you at math.
For computer literacy.
Or whatever counts as a high mark in UK schools. They don't use ABCDF, or do they?
spell checkers are to built into every single typing device
I also believe grammar is to useless.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You know that spellcheckers have different dictionaries for different dialects, right? So, for example, these computers would probably have been configured for "British English".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
They often don't tell you witch word to use. Their great, but not the entire solution.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
1) Spelling checkers do not include the full lexicon
Some of the omissions in spell check dictionaries are glaring, especially when it comes to science or engineering terms. And I'm not talking about some crazy obscure biology terms, but even things like "electromagnetism".
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
The test creators failed the test. Really, kudos to those who correctly spelled full words, regardless of the means. Hopefully, they've also learned better than to text "r u ok, lmk" while wearing a baseball hat with the brim in the back.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Call me a dinosaur if you want, but if we take away your calculator I bet I can run rings around you at math.
You are not a dinosaur, you simply had a proper education.
It sorts the students who can read and spell out from the students who cant.
The students who can study to some standard from students who cant, won't.
The students who have had the support needed to learn to spell.
Such students will do well at university when given other new subjects to study.
Students who can learn to spell might do well with other languages, science, math, arts.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Use notepad
FTFY
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Your spell checker is working well. You were thinking of... wait for it... "They're"
Your spell checker is working well. You were thinking of... wait for it... "can't".
I think feature would be more appropriate...
Scotland, where correct usage of the tool you are using is cheating.
Spelling is definitely one of the worst features in the English language. It's so bad that here in the US we have spelling contests. I think the unpredictable and complicated spelling makes English an extremely poor choice for written communication. It's a shame since it is such an efficient language in spoken form.
You have proven his point. Useless.
âoe intents and purposes âoe
If only there were a way to put the test questions on a medium that did not provide automatic access to spell checking, internet etc.
Darn, I would gladly kill a tree for such a solution.
Sure, disable spell checkers... because in real life they don't exist either,
Sure, it's fine to be able to remember everything but it's only a few who can do it close to perfectly. The rest just need to be able to know how to proof your writing afterwards. It's completely similar to proficiency tests when hiring new people for IT jobs like operations. Sure, it's fine to know exactly what every error means and how to fix them, but it's just as good to know your limits and how to use Google for the rest. What matters is... did you fix the problem?
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
We solve the problems they way we can.
That is the point he was making.
This space unintentionally left blank.
The solution is simple and obvious: Handle it like a mathematics exam.
Fore eech clase, chus ahh uneekly sett uf werds, eech rendrd yunique tou thaat pratikula clase, soh ahs tou prvant spelchekr frowm gaving hup fuh sekrit ansirs.
Why is spelling still a thing?
Oy dunt no
You talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded.
Wow, a spell check can see "cant" and know that you mean "can't". Bravo, well done. Will the spell checker work equally well when I spell it "cunt"? Or "karndt"? Or "qbzlspt", because some internet dickhead decided the existence of spell checkers meant we didn't need to teach spelling anymore, and kids no longer know how to assemble letters to form basic phonemes, let alone approximate the accepted spelling of a word?
Right, critical thinking and problem solving. And what exactly will you be critically thinking about? Something you read about in a book? On a web site? Nope! Sorry, didn't teach kids how to read.
And when the kids of tomorrow solve climate change or FTL space travel or whatever, how will they communicate their solutions? Via emoji? Snapchat? Can't wait to see the generation ship built using schematics from Instagram.
One of my greatest frustrations when training someone in using software is that they don't know about the menus that appear on a right hand mouse button click.
Whoever uses them - pass 'em with an "A', I say!
And a Pass with Distinction if they use keyboard shortcuts.
There is more than one kind of literacy.
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert
"Their" bothered you but "witch" didn't?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its really ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
The solution is obvious- save all of the misspelled words in the spell checker dictionary so they all show as correct. Vindictive version- only save one or two misspelled words and remove the correct spelling. They could also set another language as default, or better yet remove the dictionary or use a program without a spell checker.
I can't fcuking spill for shet wuthot it.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
When everyone finally gets there, they're, and their; and it's and its, correct; then, and only then, will I agree with you.
Uh, those are grammar errors, not spelling.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
No TRUE scotsman would ever cheat!!
Hack free test method....
Use Paper! Imagine, if we didnt try to digitize everything just for the sake of doing it and used a tried and true method like...PAPER!
If those computers have two-button mice, then replacing the mice with one-button mice might work.
For an extremely long time on PCs :
"Main button" : gives you a "left"-click
"2nd button" OR "main button" + "shift" : gives you a "right"-click
"3rd button" OR "2nd button + main button" OR "main button" + "ctrl" : gives you a "middle" click.
(I even have manuals of DOS games explaining this).
I saddly don't have a single button mouse handy to test if that still works in 2018 OSes.
But the "two button" for "middle click" definitely works on my laptop on Linux.
On mac :
Most modern single bouton Apple mice have capacitive surface and will emit a click depending on either the finger position or number of fingers.
So the student could have some way around input device screw-up. (It takes just one kid to discover it, then after half an hour, the whole school knows the trick).
The best strategy would be to NOT put the sentence in a <TEXTAREA> to begin with. (avoid triggering the spell checker all together).
They should instead have had a first round to point to errors by clicking words.
and only ask for correct spelling in a second round of the exercices.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In England, Scotland and other Commonwealth countries they teach maths
Oh you and your crazy idioms.
Mathematics is plural, you know.
So is economics but nobody shortens that to "econs". If you want to say "maths" instead of "math" go ahead. I promise I won't care. But let's not pretend any particular dialect of english is somehow self consistent or makes much sense.
And mathematics is a subject which by definition is singular. The word "mathematics" is both the singular and plural form. You can refer to the subject (singular) as well as the multiple parts of the subject (plural) with the same word. Same with "maths" or "math". They mean the same thing and are both singular and plural depending on context.
Let it go.
"Hey wait, we need to disable the tool in order to properly test the students."
Reminds one of Chernobyl...
if we take away your calculator I bet I can run rings around you at math
And if we take away their jackhammers, I bet John Henry can bang holes in rock faster than any modern construction worker.
But in all seriousness, English isn't about being able to spell any more than mathematics is about arithmetic. There are higher level skills that we should be striving towards, and so if you want to make an argument that long division is useful (which it very well may be) you should be claiming that understanding it allows one to more easily absorb next-level topics (like calculus or linear algebra) rather than because it allows you to divide numbers without a calculator.
On the plus side, I bet any student who did not know how to use a spell checker learned quickly.
You must be one of them colleagues, how are you man? :)
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Call me a dinosaur if you want, but if we take away your calculator I bet I can run rings around you at math.
What calculator? Programming is my day job so I'll just use python or octave from an xterm if I need one. I mean sure you could probably run rings around me at doing arithmetic on paper if you take away my computer, but honestly what's the point?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well 'scrote. It's OK being 'tarded, you can live a good life 'tarded, my first wife was a 'tard and she's an airline pilot now.
I'll have you know my shit is highly intelligent and has graduated from university.
"Pupils who right-clicked on the words were then able to access the correct spelling." This by you is a "glitch"? Sounds like a working mouse to me.
After fixing all the glitches, the students will have to copy-paste the text to a spellchecker-enabled window.
Then they will disable copying.
The students will then take a screenshot and OCR it into a spellchecker window.
Then ...
Who cares how they spell things, they're going to mispronounce the words anyway.
If you don't want me to use a spell checker on my test, perhaps you shouldn't supply me with one.
Bunch of fucking idiots.
Yes, that was implied by the statement. To be more clear, rarely can one (or can users be arsed to), switch dictionaries on the fly/mark different portions of text as being different dialects.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Even math like this?
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.01722.pdf
I figured there must be some trick like that. The subject field, here on our beloved slashdot, is not checked - try it.
For me anyway - Firefox on Linux.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
On Firefox 60.0.1 (my distro (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) package) :
- By default, it isn't checked.
- But right click, and toggle "Check Spelling", and it gets checked by the internal spell checker of Firefox (Spellbound)
- That still doesn't trigger any proof-reader/grammar (such as LanguageTool(*) or Grammarly), thus you're still not covered against homophones or agreements/declension (depending on your language. Here it's English, so only the former).
---
(*) In my opinion, a much better plug-in than grammarly :
- It's open-source
- You can also run a daemon locally.
- So you don't need to necessarily pipe all your text fields into some untrusted 3rd party web server.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]