They are banned already. If you have a mobile phone or Ipod/MP3 player in the room (not just on you) during your exam all your exams AT LEAST on that exam board get failed automatically. Using them to cheat would be very easy. In January in an internal exam (same conditions as an external one) I managed to listen to my Ipod for 25 minutes after I finished the paper without anyone noticing, so cheating would have been very easy.

The exams get easier each year, and the amount of jobs available get less, so it seems like a good thing to plug into an IPod and forget about the next 60 years of working for the taxman.

When I was taking my exams, these new fangled things called calculators were banned.

I failed every exam, yet im a director of my own company. Go figure!!

I remember similar stories about the Sony Walkman and even radios.

All electronic devices are banned in UK exams. There's no reason to have them on you for Gods sake is there....

"I failed every exam, yet im a director of my own company. Go figure!!"

And one actually wonders about the state of the world?

I would want to listen music during my exam. Heavy metal will make me keep myself awake in exams ;)

Hm... cheating just can't be stopped. Back when I took my first physics course in college, we had what I would call a "Doogie Howser" professor. Boy genius, but then he wanted *everyone* to be like him. That meant, there were no formulas allowed on the exam, you had to know them. All 100 of them.

So, naturally, I did two things:

- Those formulas which are used for problem solution, I programmed, and

- Those which were used only to "prove" other formula were written into a text file.

It wasn't exactly cheating, as other professors did allow this, but oh well... thanks to my TI-89 I made it through.

Now, the Economy professor wondering why did I use a calculator during theory-only exam is another story...

Back in the day when HP-35's were nice and new (and costly, but worth it), I had a quiz in Thermodynamics. Being of sound mind, I raised my hand and asked the professor if I could use my calculator. After he said yes, I continued and plugged away at a mindless interpolation of steam tables. Four problems. It didn't seem that difficult, just tedious, and figuring out how to form each of the problems into a similar construct, the HP-35 made it quite easy. I was a happy camper. Unfortunately the rest of the class wasn't having to do the (up to) 4 siginificant figure math by hand. The next class was a experience when I got a pretty reasonable grade (100%) and the next lowest grade was in the 30% range. In that class, if looks could kill, I'd be dispatched many times over. Quite a learning experience, 35 years ago! Almost qualifies me for BOFH status.

They banned pretty much all unnecessary electronic devices in school period, except for calculators. And graphing calculators could only be used in approved classes. You couldn't have a walkman, discman, gameboy, beeper, etc...

Now of course I had this Sharp electronic organizer which just looked like a basic calculator to the uninformed teacher... So the moral of the story is, why bother, there's always a way to cheat.

Only iPod I know is my first generation Nano, and it can carry text files in it (I don't think that's what the original author meant by lyrics). Small, but quite enough for a lot of info. No need to listen to anything, therefore easier. Anyway, nowadays I have to keep an eye on students instead...

J

maybe a solution... Spend some course fees on a simple caculatior that everybody HAS TO USE. It could be handed out at random, with no memory of equations etc.. It could be a minor investment, even for a university.

-a minor investment, especially when I have been messing about today, installing £XX,000 worth of sensors to serve a purpose more political than scientific.

iF iRritating iPods are causing so much trouble, why not ban the bloody awful things from EVERYWHERE, not just exam rooms? I've had an ear-full of noisy nerds with their iRritating iPods. I say bin the things and have done with it.

electronic cheating was mostly eliminated by not allowing anything into the classroom except the clothes on the students (and the id cards for checking the identity), providing paper and pens and in some cases strip searching the students. This has reduced cheating to a minimum. (mostly to smuggled in pieces of paper)

ps: I have to admit it, that i've used a ti89 to pass an economy exam, by downloading the course material and uploading it to the calculator just a few hours before the exam. The first time i've read the text was when i used the text search feature of the calculator to find the answers. Nowdays i would have to learn it.

"So, naturally, I did two things:

- Those formulas which are used for problem solution, I programmed, and

- Those which were used only to "prove" other formula were written into a text file.

It wasn't exactly cheating, as other professors did allow this, but oh well... thanks to my TI-89 I made it through."

This sounds sooooo familiar, although I did the same with a TI-82.

memories...

I never did use text files or such on my calculator (TI-82), but I did program all the complicated physics and maths functions in to save a LOT of time. It was a well known fact that we used these programs and nobody minded.

We also had access to a little book called Binas, which lists all physics and math formulas, variables and all manner of usefull information, a fact which the tests used extensively by asking for things that you couldn't possibly memorize.

I just used to learn the stuff. What a fool.

"Spend some course fees on a simple caculatior that everybody HAS TO USE."

Or, as for the Oxford University Engineering degree, stipulate that candidates can only use 1 particular model of scientific calculator, which has no memory of any use, and costs about £8 from your local stationary store... Not a massive financial burden even for impoverished students!

Don't know about other places, but most of us wouldn't have risked cheating - the penalties for being caught were too severe. One undergrad (in an Arts subject) was caught in his finals exams with notes written on his arm - booted out of Oxford after 3 years with nothing to show for it - explain that gap in your CV to future employers...

I dont know if it is somthing to do with Oxford or Engineering, but at Oxford Brooks we were limited to a choice of about 3 calculators, in much the same vain. I’m still using my Casio fx-83 today.

Why Children thought they needed the latest Graphical calculator in GCSE Maths I don't know.

After 3 years of BEng level maths and many years work I still can't use half the functions on my Calculator.