::A Geek in Korea::

One of my students had to complete some of her intensive computer based training today. Half of her class was absent, so I took the students into the computer lab to let them work on any of their online assignments they needed to do. Their are entire online programs none of the foreign teachers need to touch, so I don’t go in the lab often. I let the students work.

The other student in the lab noticed that when the girl signed in, there was a bug. Someone had installed a something that the English training program caught as a cheating program. He said that the bug window that popped up saying that it was blocking a macro. He showed me what he thought was the culprit. Someone had installed a keyboard macro on this machine.

We saw when we ran the English training program that the macro was designed to try to monitor the lessons and copy some of the repeated sentence practice the students had to complete by typing in their answers multiple times. I guess some good student would complete the exercise, and then the cheater would log in, push a button, and have their homework completed for them instantly. Since the macro didn’t work, we don’t know what it was trying to do.

Anyway, as my class ended, another class entered the room. I asked the students if they knew who had been sitting at the computer with the installed macro. Someone told me that it was one of the WORST students that I taught last year. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but of the two students in the school at the time of the incident that I would guess would cheat, he was first on my list.

I went out in front of the secretary’s desk where he was goofing around.

“Did you install a computer keyboard macro?”

The boy answered, “No! I didn’t.”

“So, do you know who did do that?”

The boy said that a really bad student in his class, probably the number two most likely culprit, someone I also can’t stand, and his sworn enemy, had actually installed the program.

The secretary jumped up animated and said, “You little liar! That boy you said did it wasn’t here today.”

The boy said, “Oh, I know. He didn’t install that program TODAY, he did it last week.”

The secretary had him now. “That’s impressive, considering we ghosted the machines this weekend. They all have fresh installs. There isn’t ANYTHING installed on those machines that wasn’t put on there in the last two days since class started. The person you accused hasn’t been here all week. I couldn’t have been him, so why would you lie like that to blame him?”

Either the boy was lying and trying to frame his enemy in class, or there was another student potentially at fault. We don’t have any security cam footage in that room. I tried to get a little more information out of the student.

“So, how does that program work anyway? I tried to use it but I just couldn’t figure it out.”

The boy replied, “Oh, it doesn’t work. It’s being blocked.”

Wow, for a student that claims he didn’t install a keyboard macro, he sure seems to know a lot about how it works and the problems with its operation. That’s not suspicious.

I’m not sure the boy got punished. I know my director was flabbergasted that dishonest students would lie about installing programs to aid them in cheating to avoid studying. Students would rather spend an hour with an elaborate plan to get out of ten minutes of work than study a single second. It’s infuriating. Sadly, I was the same way in high school, and I nearly bombed my math classes because of it. I guess if I had to spend my free time typing in repetitive answers, I’d get the idea to cheat on things too. Still, I never paid money for an English program just to try to cheat and avoid it either.

If it was up to me, I’d install Linux on all the boxes, harden all the applications so they require administrator passwords, and run them as dummy like terminals that don’t allow anyone to install anything, and only allow interent access through a strict firewall. Of course Koreans would never, ever do that.