iPods banned in schools?

I read with both shock and dismay an article on Yahoo News entitled, "Schools banning iPods to beat cheaters."

The whole article dealt with how school districts are trying to stop students from cheating on tests by banning iPods. I was shocked that school districts found it necessary to do this. One paragraph in particular caught my attention and made me think of Dr. Stearns.

"Mountain View recently enacted a ban on digital media players after school officials realized some students were downloading formulas and other material onto the players."

The reason I thought of Dr. Stearns was because of the "downloading" of formulas. All I could hear in my mind, when I read those words, was Dr. Stearns asking us "Why are we concerned with getting students to memorize the formulas? They can get this information anywhere." I have to say this is so right. This paragraph is an excellent example of "traditional" education in action. Instead of being concerned with how students might be using the iPods to cheat, I think that more emphasis should be concentrated upon how iPods can be used in the classroom to make the lesson clearer and more exciting for students.

I have to add that I was disappointed with this article mainly due to the fact that the writer didn't balance her article very well. She waited until the last two paragraphs to introduce Tim Dodd the executive director of The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University.

Dodd, commented about how the university not only provided students with iPods, but experimented with the students and the devices to see if they could be utilized for learning purposes. The journalist quoted Dodd as saying, in the last paragraph, "'Trying to fight the technology without a dialogue on values and expectations is a losing battle . . . I think there's kind of a backdoor benefit here. As teachers are thinking about how technology has corrupted, they're also thinking about ways it can be used productively'."

This comment should have been placed a lot closer to the beginning of the article, since journalism handles the most important details first and uses the not so important details at the end of the article. To me, this is stating that, although, the topic is worthy of comment, it really doesn't mean that much overall. It's almost as though the journalist was treating this as an afterthought and that is what really upsets me the most with this article.

Check out the article and let me know what you think. I've linked it twice in this post, because I really think this is an important article.