Norway Trying Out Laptops For High School Exams 120
The BBC reports that Norway is experimenting with a system that would let secondary school students take their school exams on laptop computers. According to the article, using computers for exams isn't new there, but it's been on fixed machines rather than personal computers that the students can take with them and use for other purposes throughout the school day. Having suffered through three years of exams taken on the awful SoftTest (inflexible, single-platform, ugly, buggy), I hope they do a better job — this is something that is all too easy to get wrong.
Tweaks to the System (Score:4, Interesting)
Some things they might consider rather than key logging is booting from supplied portable media or booting from the network. Using key logging tends to set a bad precedent and the whole of school experience is part of their education, including accepted practices by government and respect for the privacy of individuals.
So boot from network and a quick scan and check, or boot from a cdrom which contains all required software and the exams, it also initiates a system check and then uploads the results to the network. Really easy to do with free open source software but could prove expensive with closed source proprietary software ie licences on top of licences and even 'illegal' in some cases.
Um... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is this something new?
Is it secure? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some documentation would be nice.
The Norwegian Data Inspectorate (datatilsynet) is not to happy about their trials though.
Re:Tweaks to the System (Score:5, Interesting)
The college I went to had us do some exams on our personal laptops. They'd give you a CD to boot from, which put you into a separate OS with no way of accessing the contents of your harddrive or USB drives. You'd then connect to a server to get your particular test. I never heard of anyone finding a way to cheat - excluding the methods that work on pencil & paper tests, of course.
I once tried stealing one of the disks and booting up from a lounge back in my dorm, with text books and a calculator at hand, but they were smart enough to block connections to the test server from outside the testing rooms.
The system can definitely work, when properly implemented.
Re:only on some exams.. (Score:5, Interesting)
"I've been through this school-system and I'm no big fan. What usually happens is that it almost impossible to fail an exam, and there is very hard to get a good mark. ( a celebration of mediocracy )"
I beg to differ, regular non-open book exams don't test much of anything. They test how well you can binge and purge and not much else.
The whole exam mindset is flawed IMHO, what students need is ways to integrate and practically apply what they are learning to what they are doing so they DO remember it not just as something taught out of a book, but the can actually go about using it when they want to do something.
Re:only on some exams.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course this is far harder for a teacher to evaluate than a simple multiple choice exam (I never had a single multiple choice test during my twelve years of basic education and three years at university). Therefore any student with the capacity to write coherently on the subject of their studies will at the very least be able to get a passing grade. Of course actually excelling requires the student to not only write coherently but to show real capacity for reason, and being able to correctly use and present in a way that shows their firm grasp of the matter at hand. The problem at the moment, at least with some courses, is that a student can read through the material and then simply float through the system by not being an idiot; i.e. getting passing grades by simply showing up and not write stuff that is utterly garbage.
I would agree that the implementation needs to motivate students to study harder and learn more, and to reward them when they do. Though there is a phrase that is the main doctrine for High School and above which is; Responsible for Your Own Education. Which means that students themselves are responsible for actively pursuing the knowledge required to improve in their field of study. Unfortunately statistics and psychology indicates that things aren't quite that simple. Especially when a student beginning high school is about sixteen and probably royally feed up with going to school as it is.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh. Must suck where you are. I was once asked to take my cellphone out and leave it in a bucket at the front of the class, but they didn't check beyond 'voluntary' compliance.
Why not? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Tweaks to the System (Score:3, Interesting)
Only because they're not engineered with subversion in mind. Bluepill is simply a hypervisor, and it's exceptionally difficult to tell if it's running.