Mobile phone cheaters better look out!

Honestly, I've never cheated on an exam. I don't think I'd even try, mostly for the fact that I could put my efforts elsewhere. But a new study out of Great Britain says that a full quarter of exam heaters were using mobile phones to hide and receive digital crib notes.

The study was conducted by the UK's Qualification and Curriculum Agency (QCA) in an effort to help stem this new wave of digital cheating. The results of this study brought forth some interesting suggestions as how to reduce the possibility of students electronically cheating on exams. One suggestion was holding exams in a giant Faraday cage. Well, not a cage per-say, but rather a room lined with a fine Brass or Copper fabric to eliminate any and or all rouge wireless signals. Mobile phone signal blockers could help to scramble incoming signals, but these devices are banned by the UK's telecom watch dog Ofcom. Further suggestions involved painting rooms with a radio frequency inhibiting paint. This paint simply has a high concentration of Cobalt mixed in, and it's incredibly expensive. Metal detectors too, to see if a student is smuggling in a cell phone.

It seems just a little ridiculous that schools in the UK, and many through out the rest of the world would have to go to such great lengths to prevent these cheaters from cheating. As I had said before, I've never cheated in an exam, but have seen other students cheating with cell phones, slips of paper, electronic dictionaries, and pocket translators. Perhaps the easiest solution s would involve having someone looking over the students shoulder during the exam, just to make sure they're not trying to cheat. Besides, how do you know if the person text messaging you the answers isn't a complete idiot or not.