I talk about "texting the answers" or cheating with cell phones in Totally Wired, and have also blogged here about the copy and paste syndrome that is happening with teens who literally enter their key word into Google and then copy and paste what they find into their papers (sometimes from Wikipedia!). Now it seems that teens have figured out how to load their iPods or other MP3 players with answers as well. And so of course schools are responding by banning the devices.

The bigger underlying issues here are why students feel that it's somehow ok to cheat and, maybe more importantly, why students feel the need to cheat (poor study habits? too much homework? learning issues?).

CNN wrote this article about the bans in which a 17-year-old makes a very salient point:

Kelsey Nelson, a 17-year-old senior at the school, said she used to listen to music after completing her tests -- something she can no longer do since the ban. Still, she said, the ban has not stopped some students from using the devices.

"You can just thread the earbud up your sleeve and then hold it to your ear like you're resting your head on your hand," Nelson said. "I think you should still be able to use iPods. People who are going to cheat are still going to cheat, with or without them."

Right. It's not the technology that's making students cheat, post inappropriate photos or any of the negative things teens tend to do, so banning and blocking doesn't really address the core issues...And it eliminates the possibility of using technology in more positive educational ways. Another great quote from the article:

Conversely, Duke University in North Carolina began providing iPods to its students three years ago as part of an experiment to see how the devices could be used to enhance learning.

The music players proved to be invaluable for some courses, including music, engineering and sociology classes, said Tim Dodd, executive director of The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke. At Duke, incidents of cheating have declined over the past 10 years, largely because the community expects its students to have academic integrity, he said.

"Trying to fight the technology without a dialogue on values and expectations is a losing battle," Dodd said. "I think there's kind of a backdoor benefit here. As teachers are thinking about how technology has corrupted, they're also thinking about ways it can be used productively."