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Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

nytimes.com

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Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#161

Post by denimnerd42 »

wolframhempel wrote: post #72

This has been eluded to by a few other comments already, but I think it's worth stressing: Maybe the problem is that our definition of "cheating" doesn't make sense anymore. Our methods of teaching come from a worldview in which the information stored in your head is your only resource. That wasn't true in the past where you could consult colleagues, look things up in books or call experts - and it's certainly not tr…

I agree. We had open notes / open internet (no communication) exams at engineering school and they wouldn't help you pass the test if you didn't know the material. Maybe you could spend all exam period solving one of the questions if you weren't prepared but you'd be lucky to get a D.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#162

Post by forgotusername6 »

tester756 wrote: post #147
forgotusername6 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back at university one of the first things we were told about being an a good engineer was: "You don't need to know everything, but you do need to know where to look it up". It's a statement that I agree with. There is just too much knowledge to know it all. These days there is a very real skill in knowing how to search i.e. a second order version of the above statement "you need to know where to find out how to look…

But still, there's "minimal required knowledge".

It depends. I haven't yet in my career come across something that I couldn't research online because I hadn't been taught it. Usually the first step is to discover which words to use, reading around the domain. Once I have the words I can usually find out everything I need to do my job.

Knowledge is so easily acquired these days that, while useful, it is not essential. I hire people with zero domain knowledge for that reason.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#163

Post by wolframhempel »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #115
nano9 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what the halting problem implies, what complexity is, what Turing machine means and why they are an abstraction for algorithms, and the basic common memes of programming such as using a stack and a heap, IEEE 754 floating point numbers, 2s complement binary numbering, and so on and so forth. Yet I don't know a lick of Go. If I were to open up a Hello World tutorial for Go during the interview, would I ho…

I think people who are really into "do the job for an hour" interviews don't understand this. Some skills (particularly programming languages) are just really easy to learn. I learned go in a week for a consulting job. If I had to do an interview in go, I would not have gotten the job.

Then how about you spent the week learning Go and then come interview?

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#164

Post by setr »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #162
tester756 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But still, there's "minimal required knowledge".

It depends. I haven't yet in my career come across something that I couldn't research online because I hadn't been taught it. Usually the first step is to discover which words to use, reading around the domain. Once I have the words I can usually find out everything I need to do my job. Knowledge is so easily acquired these days that, while useful, it is not essential. I hire people with zero domain knowledge for tha…

I see people struggling to find the correct initial keywords to search on all the time; and I have the same problem trying to google domains I don’t know. But this can usually be solved with sufficient effort, though I don’t know many people who are willing to put in that effort.

But more problematic is when people don’t know there’s a problem to google in the first place — it seems to do the job — which is usually resolved by both education and experience, but is ultimately a result if they don’t know what they don’t know.

The knowledge is generally out there, but you need to know you’re looking for it, and it’s only in the common/trivial problems that it’s so obvious that the compiler/tooling/customer just flat-out tells you you’ve missed something

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#165

Post by pclmulqdq »

wolframhempel wrote: post #163
pclmulqdq wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people who are really into "do the job for an hour" interviews don't understand this. Some skills (particularly programming languages) are just really easy to learn. I learned go in a week for a consulting job. If I had to do an interview in go, I would not have gotten the job.

Then how about you spent the week learning Go and then come interview?

Because there's a big difference between doing a week of unpaid work hoping to get a job and doing a week of paid work after you already have it.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#166

Post by everforward »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #60
pksebben wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one sort of wonders what the value in standardized testing is, in a world with such easy access to information.

There are two main purposes: 1. You can't look for information if you don't know it exists. 2. Most standardized tests aren't used in the expectation that the testee's knowledge will matter in the future. Instead, the idea is that people who score higher will be generally more competent at whatever it is you want them to do.

> 1. You can't look for information if you don't know it exists.

You absolutely can. I don't know if there are stats on the number of people who have circumnavigated the globe in an amphibious vehicle, but I can Google it.

I don't know whether the thickness of an electrical cable influences the electromagnetic field it creates, but I can Google it.

You can even Google generic stuff like "do charged particles in the atmosphere exert any force on objects at ground level" and get a survey of the forces.

That only holds true if you assume people are making very specific queries in an unfamiliar domain. It's entirely possible to start with very general queries in an unfamiliar domain and hone in on a specific piece.

It's common in software engineering. I don't understand how databases optimize queries, but I can start with a broad query like "what factors does Postgres use to optimize queries" and slowly hone in on whatever is making my query weird/bad.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#167

Post by As_You_Wish »

wolframhempel wrote: post #72

This has been eluded to by a few other comments already, but I think it's worth stressing: Maybe the problem is that our definition of "cheating" doesn't make sense anymore. Our methods of teaching come from a worldview in which the information stored in your head is your only resource. That wasn't true in the past where you could consult colleagues, look things up in books or call experts - and it's certainly not tr…

I agree. I dropped out of school in kindergarten. Why do I have to know my multiplication tables by heart? Why do I even have to know how to add two numbers together? I don't even know the alphabet and how to read and write - I'm just talking into a microphone and this is being written. I don't even know what country I live in or who the polical leader is, why should I? I can look it up online, I just don't have any desire to.

As you can see, your argument is silly.

It's important to know things, in your head.

Of course I realize that you don't mean people shouldn't learn the alphabet or learn math, but where does one draw the line, where they don't have to learn stuff in their head?

But there are always holes in what one is even able to look up. Maybe not for everyone, but for most.

I just and a conversation the other day about this with someone and I was flabbergasted. The topic we discussed is that anyone can create a SQL database - anyone can. But do they normalize the database to 3rd or 4th normal form? He worked with a lot of corporations, and he said most companies don't have normalized databases. In university, that was a basic thing that they taught a semester course on that. An entire semester. Not to memorize anything, but just the general concepts.

Someone can learn how to create an incorrectly structured database easily, but they don't even know about normalization, so how can you even look it up in the first place? And even if you do, somehow, learn what it is and look it up, I took the class for an entire semester. How is someone going to learn it in 15 minutes by looking it up? I looked up stuff in the book, too, and got info from the professor, and it took me an entire semester, and everyone else in the class, too. Unless you're calling us all dummies.

There's all kinds of stuff like that. You don't know how to look up something if you don't even know it exists to look up, and it is not obvious.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#168

Post by As_You_Wish »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #162
tester756 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But still, there's "minimal required knowledge".

It depends. I haven't yet in my career come across something that I couldn't research online because I hadn't been taught it. Usually the first step is to discover which words to use, reading around the domain. Once I have the words I can usually find out everything I need to do my job. Knowledge is so easily acquired these days that, while useful, it is not essential. I hire people with zero domain knowledge for tha…

Oh, rly?

Explain this to me by looking it up. https://imgur.com/Bj24AAR

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#169

Post by sudosysgen »

bitwize wrote: post #128
janekm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could accept that in this day and age, expecting kids to recite factoids broadcast to them by a "teacher" doesn't make any kind of sense any more, with google in everyone's pocket. And testing in the typical style that fails when a student can use a textbook or google makes just as little sense.

The irony is, Paul Lockhart could only see the beauty of geometry -- and thus write A Mathematician's Lament -- because he learned his times tables and other fundamental mathematical techniques by heart. Abilities that can be acquired only through drilling. Drills and memorizaton aren't the only thing in education, but they are key.

You will eventually learn the times tables by heart of you need to multiply enough. Same goes for a lot of fundamentals. Practice is more of a key than rote memorization.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#170

Post by sam0x17 »

tester756 wrote: post #152
sam0x17 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like how to use google

Nope. I wouldn't want to go to doc that has to Google basic stuff.

Conversely, I wouldn't want to go to a doc who doesn't know how to Google basic stuff.
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