Writing Feature Articles - Step 1 - Lesson 1 | Page 54

Writing Feature Articles - Lesson
Writing Feature Articles - Handout . a

Experienced

Name: ________________________________________ Date: ___________________

. a: Feature Articles Packet

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One Third of Teens Use Cellphones to Cheat in School
June 23, 2009 01:45 PM ET | Zach Miners | Permanent Link |
Forget passing handwritten notes underneath desks or
inking your arm with essential math formulas before a
killer test. If students today want to cheat, they have a
more insidious tool at their disposal: cellphones. More
than one third of teens with cellphones admit to having
stored information on them to look at during a test or
texting friends about answers, a new survey ?nds.
And teens' parents, while realistic about the frequency
of cheating in schools, might need to overcome their
own blind spots: More than 75 percent of parents
responding to the survey say that cellphone cheating
happens at their children's school, but only 3 percent
believe their own teen is using a cellphone to cheat.
"I believe my kids' consciences would prevent them from doing it, as they are good kids deep down," one parent
said in an interview for the nationwide online poll, conducted by Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based
education company.
"The results should be a wake-up call for educators and parents," says James Steyer, CEO and founder of Common
Sense Media. "These versatile technologies have made cheating easier. The call to action is clear."
That action, Steyer says, should consist of parents and teachers educating themselves on how kids use technology
to cheat and then helping students understand that the consequences for online or electronic cheating are just as
serious as those for old-fashioned cheating.
But ?rst, adults will have to leap another hurdle. Nearly 1 in 4 students thinks that accessing notes on a cellphone,
texting friends with answers, or using a phone to search the Internet for answers during a test isn't cheating.
Some students say that the lack of person-to-person contact in new 21st-century methods of cheating makes it
harder for them to feel as if they're doing something wrong. Others see texting during tests simply as helping one
another, as opposed to looking at someone else's paper during an exam, which they consider cheating.
Madeline Jones, a recent graduate of Baylake Pines School in Virginia Beach, Va., says that for papers or online
tests, students might use the Web to copy and paste text from other published reports. And for regular in-class
exams, she says sneaky students can easily take advantage of the iPhone and its wireless Internet access, as one of
her classmates typically did.

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