Related: Boston Globe Covers Up Israeli Ecstasy Ring
"Texting during MCAS test results in drug charges" by Michele Morgan Bolton, Globe Correspondent | May 22, 2009
Texting during an MCAS exam got a 17-year-old Silver Lake High School student arrested and suspended this week. Administrators who confiscated his cellphone said they found details about an alleged drug deal instead of the cheating they suspected.
Cory A. Bannerman of Kingston was released on his own recognizance after being charged with distributing a Class D substance and distribution within 1,000 feet of a park or school, said Sergeant Zachary Potrykus of the Kingston Police Department. Bannerman could not be reached for comment, nor did school officials return calls.
Potrykus said a Kingston police officer was dispatched to the high school at 10:48 a.m. Tuesday after principal Richard Kelley learned about a texted conversation Bannerman had with another 16-year-old student. "There was a concern that testing material was being shared," Potrykus said. "And normal practice is to check the cellphone."
When the principal did, he found an exchange in which Bannerman wrote of selling an amount of marijuana for $25 in a school bathroom. Once police arrived, Bannerman produced a small plastic bag with "a green, leafy substance," the police report said.
The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System is a series of math, English, and science tests on which schools are judged each year. More than 1.2 million tests like the ones underway earlier this week are given annually statewide.
Cellphones are banned from MCAS testing sites, said J.C. Considine, spokesman for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. "It's crystal clear. You cannot bring electronic devices into the classroom."
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At least, not yet!
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Gadgets such as the Apple iPhone and the iPod Touch are mainstays on college campuses - largely because they help students escape the pressures of the classroom.
Now the nation's oldest journalism school is asking students to buy those or similar devices. Not to listen to indie rock or watch clips from "The Daily Show," but to download classroom lectures or confirm facts on the Web while reporting from the scene of a plane crash or town council meeting.
The new rule for incoming freshmen at the University of Missouri School of Journalism appears to mark one of the first times an American university is requiring undergraduates to buy devices like the iPhone. The policy has spurred a debate about the limits and possibilities of technology as well as corporate influence in academia....
That's who academia serves: School is to prepare you for work, and to meet the deadlines while giving the answers they want
Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California:
"It really shows how both journalism and education are changing in transformational ways. The biggest effect the Internet will have is not how we play or communicate, but how we learn."
I didn't discover the truth about 9/11 or my society (and so many other things) until I discovered the blogs!
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