Browsing a magazine while waiting for a dentist appointment I saw an article titled Cheating Goes High-Tech where basically the author comments about a case in a high school in Iowa City(IA) where some students were caught cheating.
Apparently they created an audio file with the information and played through their earphones in the test session. Because this lap of sophistication in the cheating techniques, the author commented that in many schools in the US the iPods and digital media players are being banned.
I don't endorse cheating, but certainly I think that the process of create the cheat sheet, exercise the student capabilities to - at least - identify the main ideas / concepts of the lesson.
As an educators and instructional designers I think that we should re-think the way we evaluate the kids. If our tests requires more application of the content instead an automatic answer the cheat sheet will be useless.
Source: Good Housekeeping magazine - Issue October 2007 - page 125
(Well .. what kind of literature did you think I was going to get in a waiting room ? ;-P )
