As part of my doctoral preparation I have been reviewing various research papers, including one by Marc Prensky entitled “What can you learn from a cell phone? Almost anything! Now it seems a school is taking up his challenge. A Sydney girls’ school is redefining the concept of what might previously have been considered cheating by allowing students to “phone a friend” and use the internet and i-Pods during exams.
Presbyterian Ladies’ College’s headmaster, William McKeith, was inspired to redefine the open-book exam to new technological heights after reading Prensky’s views in a British Educational Communications and Technology Agency publication. Prensky challenged schools to adapt, stating: “What if we allowed the use of mobile phones and instant messaging to collect information during exams, redefining such activity from ‘cheating’ to ‘using our tools and including the world in our knowledge base’?
The College in Sydney’s Croydon district is giving the assessment method a trial run with year 9 English students and plans to expand it to all subjects by the end of the year. An English teacher, Deirdre Coleman, who is dean of students in years 7 to 9, is co-ordinating the pilot which she believes has the potential to change the way the Higher School Certificate examinations are run.
The Board of Studies is also looking at ways it could incorporate the use of computers in the exams.
Quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, Ms Coleman said her students were being encouraged to access information from the internet, their mobile phones and podcasts played on mp3s as part of a series of 40-minute tasks. But to discourage plagiarism, they are required to cite all sources they use.
“In terms of preparing them for the world, we need to redefine our attitudes towards traditional ideas of ‘cheating’,” Ms Coleman said. “Unless the students have a conceptual understanding of the topic or what they are working on, they can’t access bits and pieces of information to support them in a task effectively”.
“In their working lives they will never need to carry enormous amounts of information around in their heads. What they will need to do is access information from all their sources quickly and they will need to check the reliability of their information.”
Pupils initially indicated that they were apprehensive about the new approach when it was introduced, but are warming to the new methods. One student, Annie Achie, aged 15, is quoted as saying that she loved the new method. “Phoning a friend really helped,” she said. “It was good to have someone else to talk to and brainstorm some ideas with.
“I phoned my aunty who is pretty good at English. I asked her about the Olympic Games and whether it was a waste of finances. She gave me the idea that they use the money for infrastructure instead of for China’s people. I expanded on that idea.”
Importantly the pupils were not being marked on their content knowledge, but on what they could do with information. As Ms Coleman goes onto say “They weren’t marked on their information about the Olympic Games but on whether they used persuasive language effectively to make their argument.”
As the article notes “Our kids already see this on television. ‘You can use a lifeline to win $1 million,’ said one. ‘Why not to pass a stupid test?’ I have begun advocating the use of open phone tests … Being able to find and apply the right information becomes more important than having it all in your head.” (Patty, 2008, 
SMH)
To me this seems much more logical than an exam that a close friend has just had to take for her professional Project Manager’s qualification- it was straight rote learning of endless formulas, with, it appears, little need to understand what they really mean. She is a highly competent project manager already and feels she gained nothing from the exam process other than the coveted piece of paper to say she had passed.
How much better to test students on things and skills they may actaully use on the outside world!
Thanks to colleague Jedd who alerted us all to this great new application. New Flickr photo browser TagGalaxy uses tags to develop its own “tag-o-verse” using a planet metaphor. Type in a tag you’re interested in, and using the tags people have used when loading their Flickr photos TagGalaxy will instantly assemble a system of planets that represent those tags. Click on a planet to browse and zoom photos. For example, enter “New Zealand” and you get a mini planetary system of South Island, Mountains, Water, Clouds, NZ, Landscape and Lake (hah, no North Island for all you Aucklanders who think the country ends at the Bombay Hills!).
