A Cellular Cheat Sheet

Since about 2002 students have been using their cell phones for purposes other than just phoning home. 2002 is about the time articles began appearing about students using cell phone technology to cheat on tests.

In 2003 several students at the University of Maryland in Rockport were caught in a scam perpetrated by an ingenious professor. Evidently the university's protocol was to post test answers online immediately after an exam had started. Students were then texting friends who would go online and find the answers then text them back to their friends taking the exam. Professors suspected some students of cheating, but could never prove it until one professor posted fake answers to the test questions, thereby catching all the students who had those answers on their tests.

Also making the news was the use of cell phones to cheat on standardized tests such as the ACT and even more infamously the SAT in which students used their camera phones to take pictures of the test.

As more and more students have gained access to cell phones, the cheating has expanded to just your regular old run-of-the-mill tests. Students can store information such as formulas, vocabulary words, and other facts in their phones. They then try to sneakily take the phones out, hiding them (or trying to) in their lap where they then pull up the information. Unsuspecting parents may not realize that $150 phone they just purchased for their child could be a cellular cheat sheet. A casual question - "Have you ever used your cell phone to cheat on a test?" - might produce some surprising answers as parents discover they have been the unwitting accomplices in an elaborate ruse.

Some news articles have called this a creative use of cellular technology. Actually it's only a glorified, technological cheat sheet, the kind kids used to write on a tiny piece of paper hidden between their legs on the seat of their desk. It just goes to show that there is nothing new under the sun and the more things change, the more they stay the same.