I'll Ask the Audience

I saw this tweet and it made me think of a training session I helped with the day before.

We were working with some teachers in our district who are starting the process to become Google Educators.  The boot camp for the teachers was led by Donna Teuber.  The one day boot camp was designed to go over the basics of the exam and to talk about testing strategies.  Some of the strategies mentioned were having multiple devices so you could see the exam and then search for the answer in the study guide or just Google the answers.  

The most interesting moment in the day was when the teachers took the level 1 basic exam.  They started working on the assessment and immediately began to collaborate as they worked through the test.  I thought it was interesting to see that the teachers didn't even pretend to work on their own.  They asked each other questions, talked through the questions and explained why they got the answers they did. All a good form of learning in my opinion.  Yet, these are the same teachers who ask how to keep kids from cheating when they work on the Chromebooks, and would not hesitate to write up their students for cheating on a test.

If people Google or look through the study guide to find the answers does this mean they cheated?  Or does this mean they have learned one of the most important 21st century skills,  research. We can not be expected to remember everything.  But we should be expected to have the skills to find the answers when we need them.  These are skills are students need as well.  Maybe it's time we let them develop those skills.