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Rich Kids Are Cheating in School With Apple Watches (theoutline.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: There is, however, one demographic that has embraced the Apple Watch with open arms: tech-savvy, upper middle-class teens and tweens. The watch is a convenient workaround for classroom cell-phone bans; it can be used for everything from texting to cheating on tests. [...] Julia Rubin, a former middle-school teacher at a private school in New York City, said that when the Apple Watch first came out in 2014, a handful of students got them as presents for the holidays.
When Rubin asked her school's principal to ban the watches the same way the school banned cell phones, she refused. In addition to kids texting during class, there is growing concern that smart watches could be used to help kids cheat during exams. In fact, there is a wealth of YouTube videos showing teens how to do precisely that, usually with the disclaimer that they are only sharing this information "for entertainment purposes."
[...] Nikias Molina, 20, is a Spanish vlogger who runs the YouTube channel Apple World. A slender, dark-haired kid with braces and a slight European accent, Molina posted a 2018 video showing subscribers how to use various apps on the Apple Watch to cheat on exams. As he demonstrates in the video and explained to me, there are apps you can download onto the Apple Watch to save PDFs, but the most common method is to take a photo of a cheat sheet and pull it up on the Apple Watch, which doesn't require internet accessibility. The response to the video was mixed -- "students were thanking me [in the comments], and teachers were hating on me" -- but the video racked up more than 115,000 views.
When Rubin asked her school's principal to ban the watches the same way the school banned cell phones, she refused. In addition to kids texting during class, there is growing concern that smart watches could be used to help kids cheat during exams. In fact, there is a wealth of YouTube videos showing teens how to do precisely that, usually with the disclaimer that they are only sharing this information "for entertainment purposes."
[...] Nikias Molina, 20, is a Spanish vlogger who runs the YouTube channel Apple World. A slender, dark-haired kid with braces and a slight European accent, Molina posted a 2018 video showing subscribers how to use various apps on the Apple Watch to cheat on exams. As he demonstrates in the video and explained to me, there are apps you can download onto the Apple Watch to save PDFs, but the most common method is to take a photo of a cheat sheet and pull it up on the Apple Watch, which doesn't require internet accessibility. The response to the video was mixed -- "students were thanking me [in the comments], and teachers were hating on me" -- but the video racked up more than 115,000 views.
What's the difference between pulling up a cheat sheet on your watch and having one stuck in your sock? I suppose you could keep more material on your watch, but as everyone who's ever written an open book test knows, more material is a curse, not a blessing.
If you see a kid fiddling with their smart watch during a test, fail them. Can't do that? THAT's your problem, not the watch.
I'll go one further. "Rich kids" because they have an Apple Watch? Really? Now the definition between "rich" and "poor" is based on a $349 device?
Design the exams like university level exams, where a cheat (equation) sheet is allowed, but you actually need to understand the material to finish the exam in time. regurgitation based exams are stupid.
... I looked into the soul of the girl beside me. (Woody Allen)
It is relevant because the kids who do more successfully in school, and who already have families who are at least somewhat well to do will end up with better credentials than their peers, thus their connections and better (faked) credentials will secure them a better position than their peers who did not cheat. Due to this, you'll end up with a society which is falling apart at the seems because the people managing the society all faked their way to those positions, don't actually know what they're doing, and the people who didn't fake it and DO know what they're doing are stuck doing thankless jobs. Source: I had a friend who was paid to write research papers for people far less intelligent and educated than him, who just happened to have much more money, and who would go on to gruaduate from better schools with better credentials, but HIS work is what got them there. The point is that capital twists and infects everything and undermines any ability of our society to truly be "meritocratic" when the metrics of our merits are skewed by those who use their capital to get ahead in the system.
Now the definition between "rich" and "poor" is based on a $349 device?
How to tell the difference between a "rich" kid and a "poor" kid:
A "rich" kid wears a $349 Apple Watch.
A "poor" kid wears a pair of $349 Nikes.
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Came here for this. The title is certainly a little click bait with the inference that a several hundred dollar watch separates the rich from the poor. I am very wealthy and have a 120 dollar casio solar radio controlled watch, and I know many people who make much less than I do with the latest iDoodad. I waste my money on plenty of other things so as not to be critical of choices, but to conclude that you can evaluate the socioeconomic class of a person based on a watch they are wear is ridiculous. Now if is a limited issue swiss watch from the Bern exhibits in the 400K price range, well then maybe, but even then those are all mechanical and you couldn't use them very easily to cheat.
Also if it is such an issue, how about just making students remove their watch during exams. That doesn't seem like a very complicated solution. Or even better make them put their phone and watch on a table up in the front of the class. When I was in medical school you had to leave your phone up front and it had to be powered off during the test, if it rang or made noise you would fail the exam (probably more compliance than people on airplanes using airplane mode). In 4 years of medical school I never heard 1 phone go off, that's pretty impressive.
I also agree with the commentor below. If you are writing a good exam, there isn't much you could fit on an easily accessible cheat sheet that would be useful at all. I have seen a couple of Youtube videos of people showing you how to put small pieces of paper with formula written on them inside a click-pen so you can scroll through a few formula, maybe I just don't remember being in 7th grade, but if you have taken the time to write something out that is so brief you probably have it memorized already. In one example they had written a few of the trig identities as an example, but if you know sin^2+cos^2=1 you can just divide though by whatever function you want there really is literally no reason to cheat. You want sec just divide by cos^2 to get tan^2 + 1 = sec^2. But in today's education system so much is put on memorization and not enough is put on actually understanding what you are doing.
I tried to use a Fitbit to cheat, but having to move my legs gave it away.
Table-ized A.I.
An Apple Watch may not be cheap, but having one hardly makes anyone rich. We really have a strange way of measuring wealth in this country.
No reasonable person who is having trouble putting food on the table is buying a $349 watch. Some unreasonable poor people do stupid things, but that doesn't define the metric.
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The headline is misleading and inflammatory. I'm not rich (middle class) and I sent my kids to private school for a better education than the crap public education system. People can make choices and sacrifice (ie, I didn't pay for garbage cable TV and other such nonsense) to send their kids to private school.
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Really? A "European" accent?
Can they mean "speaks Spanish like a Spaniard rather than a Mexican/Puerto Rican/American/etc," or "speaks English with a Spanish, rather than Mexican/etc accent."
Or perhaps it means they are unable to distinguish between the accents of the Spanish, Greeks, Italians, French, Germans, Poles, Finns, Swedes or British, let alone the regions thereof? (other European countries are available)
Whatever they mean, it adds nothing to the actual story and serves only to demonstrate the laziness and ignorance of this "journalist," and the ineptitude of the editorial oversight processes of this "publication."
Sorry, but this sort of thing really pisses me off - if copy like this came across my desk (OK, so it wouldn't actually, but you know what I mean), words would be had... probably starting with "bollocks."
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I was university back in the late 70s. Kids would program their calculators with the formulas. Teaching assistants would walk around and reset i.e. wipe the memory on everybody's calculator before the exam started. Most professors allowed students to bring a single 8 1/2 x 11 cheat sheet to the exams. The point of the exam wasn't to find out if you could memorize the formulas, it was to find out if you knew how to apply them.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
At the university I attend (US, top tier research, public school), watches are already banned from the testing centers. I guess it's been a thing for a little while. I was wondering why the heck watches were banned from the testing centers. I couldn't think of a way to cheat with regular watches.
I don't respond to AC's.
A poor kid has his cheat sheet scotch-taped to the back of their Timex.
You're assuming the purpose of TFA is investigative journalism. To bring an important issue to the public's attention.
It's not. The purpose is to generate more page loads and thus more advertising revenue. So if inflammatory insinuations - like singling out kids who wear an Apple Watch, or speak with a "Europeant" accent - gets you all in a huff to where you click on TFA, then it's done its job. It's one of the reasons I'm not that critical of comments here from people who haven't read TFA. So many of articles are click-bait that I won't fault someone for using a too-stringent anti-click-bait filter and not reading TFA.
that is incredibly racist.
you never mentioned race
Something isn't racist merely because it (possibly) has some correlation with race.
Misusing words like 'racist' makes fighting actual racism harder, not easier.