The naming convention is derived from the most simplistic feature on the device. That would be like calling your automobile a radio. But that is really neither here nor there. What’s making headlines for us in the Land of Fortified Academic Integrity is that institutions are banning the Apple Watch from test halls before it ever goes on sale!
As an interesting side-note, this is not the first time an Apple product has been banned before going on sale. When the iPad first came out it was banned from the entire country of Israel.
The concern for testing and cheating as it pertains to the Apple Watch is the ability to message your friends, look at notes, and even search the Internet. Oh technology, you double-edged sword of access and information.
At this point one must acknowledge the radicals who proclaim that all assessment should be open book since we live in a constantly connected world, that students should be encouraged to look up information, that the real world has no closed book assessments, yadda yadda yadda. Tell that to a trauma surgeon. We can discuss that some other time, the bottom line is that academic integrity is an incredibly important aspect of student development, the learning process and acquisition of knowledge, and to belittle the value of students living up to a code of conduct is an injustice to academe.
Is the ProctorFree team scared of the Apple Watch? No. We’ve developed a host of patent-pending technologies that can tell the difference between a user checking the time and looking up an answer.
I wish I could tell you more about it here, but you know how lawyers get about patent-pending material… I could tell you more about in a demonstration. Interested? Follow this link to request a demo and a key team member will respond to you faster than you can say, “Wow, ProctorFree. This is the most amazing proctoring service I’ve ever seen!”
