SteveBentley

Another exam cheating scandal hits BBC News - Leicestershire head teacher admits 'altering' test papers

The 1971 Act has been superceded by the Distance Selling Regs (2000) (but hasn't been repealed officially) but the outcome is pretty much the same http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/general/oft698.pdf

That doesn't really get us past the root problem that the test examines useless things.

To be fair I have used pythagoras in the real world (to code a little mobile web app that uses geolocation to find the nearest place from a database that has a load of places and their co-ordinates in) but again, most average punters aren't programming!

The maths syllabus could do with being a lot more vocationally based. When was the last time (other than a pub quiz) that you needed to know what an isosceles triangle was?

Everything you need to know about Math is here

But if the exam is only testing recall of facts, it's pretty much useless. Exams are a pedagogically flawed form of assessment that is being held on to purely because it's what we've always done.

And this is the crux of it. As long a you have exams, you will have people being taught to pass the exam rather than being taught how to apply the subject matter. A properly designed piece of coursework, which examines the process not the product can be just as 'secure' in terms of preventing plagiarism, and give much more scope for creativity.

Actually no, it's stuff that's usually used in industry but they sell academic licenses to unis, but think that adding a license server and making it a bit cheaper is all they have to do. I wish I could send it back, but it's allegedly "Industry standard" and what they need to teach.

Am alone in thinking that software that is sold with a concurrent/site/volume license that doesn't have at least one of MSI Package Silent/scripted install options ability to run it from a network share (and documentation for how to make it work) is fundamentally unfit for purpose? Some of the companies I've had the misfortune of dealing with recently seem to be living in cloud cuckoo land, thinking we have time to visit each computer individually to install the app they've charged us a small fortune for.

kudos to the teacher involved for coming up with this homework btw

I read a paper by a lecturer who reserved the top 10% of his marking scheme for students who did something he wasn't expecting. When students ask how to get a top mark he just says "surprise me". Obviously in HE lecturers have a lot more freedom to experiment with marking schemes, and in an environment where 70% represents an A grade having something to push students to achieve something higher is a good thing.

Is this because they don't understand the editing process (by that I mean the grammar of video/TV, narrative structure, cutaways etc) or aren't familiar enough with the particular editing software that's used at your place? In many respects being able to teach the theory via a paper edit is more valuable than being able to teach the ins and outs of a particular proprietry application IMO. I say that as somebody who did media GCSE and GNVQ at a time when you learned to edit audio tape with a razor blade (or mini disc if you were lucky) and video with two VHS machines. You had to think about what you were recording because you couldn't "fix it in the edit", and you had to think about what you were doing when editing as there's no undo button. All of the principles I learned with the old-skool tech have stood me in good stead for using computer based editing.

There's a comment on the article from the student in question (or somebody purporting to be, anyway) - search the page for Josh Pickett - in which he addresses this and also the commenting your code issue. He basically says that he asked for the criteria, talked to the teacher about whether his ideas were acceptable, and put comments in the code but had to go back and add a load more. Taken at face value, it seems he did everything right.

Have you got the words "new" and "existing" mixed up there?

I was led to believe that that was a bit of a grey area about whether coursework constituted an examination.

I can't remember us ever buying from somebody because we saw a good offer - we're not really in the business of making impulse buys. Consistently competitive prices are of more use to us than short term offers.

I think you have to be careful with that approach - if you are known to regularly remove dodgy stuff, it could be seen as implying that anything you leave you are deeming to be legally ok. Then when something slips through the net and you get audited it's you that's facing the awkward questions rather than the member of staff who put the file there.

I think you're arguing semantics here - the Government has £2bn less to play with than it thought it had. Saying that it's lost this money doesn't negate the fact that it shouldn't have had it in the first place.

At least he hasn't done what one idiot contractor did here - unplugged lead from monitor and wall, tested it and fried the PSU of the PC that was still plugged in to the other output.

Is CEEFAX reception good on the present analogue service? If it is then you should get your half-a-freeview ok in April.

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The main issue with this is that BBC3 and BBC4 share bandwidth and transmission facilities with CBBC and CBeebies (they're effectively the same channels, just mapped to different LCNs), which is why 3 and 4 can't extend their hours at present.

Yes Yours might be...

These are only proposals, subject to a BBC Trust consultation, so to say "will be" would be premature. I'm half expecting a 6 Music style climb down on a lot of the proposals.