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Crown Point High School March 27, 2014 Vol. 78 Issue 7 1500 S. Main St.
Crown Point, IN 46307
inklings@cps.k12.in.us
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Technology blurs cheating lines BY KATIE SHERMAN & TINA WINFREY
Photo Illustration by Maggie Gelon
Is cheating more common with the technology now present in the learning environment? 51% say yes
editor-at-large / associate editor
R
esearch used to involve a trip to the library, reading a book, highlighting and taking a crack at the Dewey Decimal System. Today, students type a word in Google. Is this cheating or resourceful? Technology has blurred the lines. According to an onlinecollege.org study of 365 students, 32.7 percent admitted to cheating in an online class. With the growing use of technology at the high school, the temptation and availability of tools used to cheat may be on the rise. “I cheat on (online tests and assignments) all the time,” a female junior said. “You can always open a new tab and close things really quickly, so you don’t really have proof unless someone sees you doing it at the exact time. (If no one sees you) nobody knows that you’re doing it.”
Business teacher Mary Bachnak believes that online classes provide an easier environment for students to cheat on assignments. “Students can email documents to one another, save it on a flash drive, edit it and upload it to the student drop box very easily,” Bachnak said. “It’s kind of obvious as a teacher when you start to see commonalities. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that a document is not an original.” Through a program on her computer, she is able to track the amount of time a student has spent on their document, the name of the student who authored it and the changes that have been made. The school’s computer labs and media center are armed with a program called Vision that allows the teacher to view what a student is looking at and the windows See Cheating on page 2
36% say no 13% say no change
What is the most common method of cheating?
9%
19%
Using a cell phone Copying off one’s neighbor
36% 36%
Discussing answers with people who already took the test Other
*100 students polled
School corporation extends school day by eight minutes BY DYLAN TAYLOR
editor-in-chief
Come April 7, students will have to cut their morning routine by a few minutes. Instead of adding another make-up day in June, the school board has confirmed that eight minutes will be added to each
school day starting April 7 for the remainder of the year to make up the weather cancellation that occurred on March 12. The school day will begin at 7:20 a.m. and end at 2:30 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and start at 7:50 a.m. on Wednesdays. Principal Chip Pettit believes
that this plan is the best option possible for making up the lost day. “I think that this is the best of a number of less-than-ideal options. I think that everybody understands that in missing 8 days of school through the course of the winter, that there were going
Sports
Feature Spring Breakdown Not all spring vacations are picture perfect
page 7
“With our graduation ceremony Tuesday (June 10), I think that this is a good plan to wrap up our school year in sync with our graduation ceremony,” Pettit said. Some, however, are unconvinced of the educational worth of eight minute additions to each See Champions on page 3
A&E
Striking Scholarships Junior Noah Burkholder commits to Louisville pages
to be some challenges to getting our school year completed in a time frame (that wasn’t ridiculous),” Pettit said. Pettit attributes this plan as a means of preventing school days from continuing beyond graduation commencement, which takes place June 10.
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Great Egg-spectations Windfall brings poetry and performance art to the Sip
page 14