WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. January 19, 2007:  WPHS students may not use cellphones and similar electronic gadgets inside an active examination room when WPHS midterms are administered next week. The ban is historic.

Parents of White Plains High School students received a recorded telephone message Friday from WPHS Principal Ivan Toper alerting them that their students will not be allowed to use cellphones, I-pods, earphones, video devices, mp3 devices, and similar hi-tech devices when they take the school mid-term exams.

It could not be determined from the message whether the ban extended down to the White Plains Middle School and Elementary levels.

Mr. Toper’s message in English only, delivered by the district’s automated call-out system, said New York State has banned use of such devices by students in exam rooms and that students caught answering cellphones, using them for whatever purpose in exam rooms, wearing earphones during a test, among other tech-related “use-modes” will be stopped from taking the test and subject to discipline.

Toper’s message said students could have cellphones on their persons in the examination room, but that had to be turned off and could not answered by a student. (WPCNR advises students not to take any electronic devices to school that day if they’re taking an exam, this being the first-time the ban is going to be in effect during exams. You do not want to make a false move.)

HI-TECH CHEATS

The unprecedented ban comes after a series of news reports detailing how students across the country are using cellphone text messaging, cellphone cameras, and mp3 devices to send questions to classmates outside of an exam room, who then text-message back the answers.

The announcement today is the first public news that the high school was even considering such a ban.

The New York Times reported in May of 2006 a variety of ways students use electronic devices to cheat on the college level: via Sidekick e-mail devices, with camera and text message exchanges, recording notes on Ipods and playing them back in an exam (a reason for the WPHS “earphone-in-action” ban). The Boston Globe reported on this phenomena as early as 2004.