You’d have to be really good at squinting to chat on exams with an Apple Watch
PEOPLE WHO ARE PROBABLY REALLY FUN AT PARTIES, aka those who sit on exam boards, want to see watches banned from school exams.
That’s because the Independent Commission on Examination Malpractice reckons that, as more devices get connected to the internet, there’s more scope for naughty students too lazy to revise to cheat in their exams.
It seems all watches are up for the recommended ban, including the tickedy-tock ones (remember those?), which seems a bit odd given smartwatches are already banned from exams.
We’re not convinced even the latest and greatest smartwatch is a particularly great cheating tool, what with such academic information functions like step counters and, err, a compass.
Nor is a device with a tiny screen the best tool for looking up which of Henry VIII’s wives didn’t get the chop, or what the heck a dodecahedron is, unless students are feeling brave enough to bark questions at watches with the Google Assistant or Siri inside them.
Nevertheless, smartwatches have been banned and now the Commission recommends all watches get shunned from exams being undertaken by schools in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
We imagine the target here are watches that look like normal analogue wristwatches but actually have a few smart functions. Again, we’re not sure how such hybrid devices will aid cheating unless they have a magnifying glass, but the commission’s chairman, Sir John Dunford, raised a reasonable point, albeit in seemingly tech-dunce language.
“It can look as if it’s a time-telling watch and actually, you press a button and it becomes an email-type watch. If you don’t ban them all I think you’re giving a very difficult job to invigilators who are looking round an exam room,” he said, reported the Guardian. “So I think the obvious thing to do here is to ban watches.”
We’re wondering if Sir John secretly hates time rather than cheating, believing it to be a nebulous concept that doesn’t actually exist. Or perhaps he really, really hates cheating after losing a prised pen he gambled in a poker game ran by a notorious card cheat.
Or perhaps we’re theorising an utter load of nonsense because it’s late in the day and we’re suffering from an Apple launch hangover.
Either way, time could be called on watch-wearing in exams. And if we’re honest, we’d have probably used some form of wearable tech to cheat in exams if it existed back at the time, as isn’t cheating just another form of problem-solving. µ
Disclaimer: don’t blame us if little Timmy goes on to ace his exam by cheating through the use if answers being read to him through smart headphones, and if he says “it’s because offa the INQUIRER” he’s a lying s**t.