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Special Provisions for exams - Using Keyboards (1 Viewer)

Sanchez#1

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Aug 14, 2002
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Is it only me, or do other people also feel that people who are allowed to use keyboards for exams are placed at a severe advantage?

Being able to use a keyboard has the following advantages:
- You can type WAY faster than you write
- Your hands don't cramp up as easily
- Your work will be neater, giving a better impression mark as opposed to someone with shock horrible handwriting, such as myself.
- You can easily edit your work. If you finish an essay early you can add another point in your introduction, and add another paragraph to the body.
- You can use the copy and paste function to repeat phrases over again.

The fact that students are also allowed to bring their own keyboards also raises possibilities for cheating. One of the latest logitech keyboards allow you to store macros. So with the press of a button you can have a whole essay pasted!
 

roo

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that's what everyone thinks. i sprained my hand last year just before our yearly exams and all my friends were saying its "unfair" "you've got an advantage" blah blah blah. true, you have some valid points but someone who is typing is not used to the conditions compared to someone who has been writing in exams since forever.

last year, i found that my marks had dropped in the yearly exams. it was really difficult to concentrate because i wasn't in the examination room with other people; it just felt like i could take my own time.

i also think better when i write, because everything flows really easily. whereas with typing, i type faster than my thinking process, if that makes sense lol. :)

and you can't judge how much you've written - i mean, for a 12 mark questions you should at least write about 1 page, maybe less but on a computer you're not sure how much you've written and that stressed me out quite a bit.

i didn't know about the keyboard thing; that's pretty unfair. i was on a dodgy laptop that kept crashing! they disabled everything from spell-check to the A:/ drive. :p
 

kyoto

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Aug 12, 2002
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...
It is true.

I sit next to sanchez#1 in maths and his writing is the ugliest thing i have ever seen.

jin has vertified this.
 

Sanchez#1

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LOL kyoto likened my hand writing to cockroach faesces :D

Anyways, I guess its true that being under different exam conditions will effect the way you do exams. But I do most of my practice essays typed (since I'm paranoid I might sprain my hand) and if you use font 14 theres not much you really need to get used to.

If you were using a dodgy laptop, then you should have had some action for complaining if you weren't happy with your marks.
 

Nelly

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I've always dreamed of doing the HSC on a laptop. Jeez, writing about 3 times faster than you can write means that you've got like 8 pages in an essay. That is awesome. If only....

I sprained my finger on the weekend, and i had my english trial module 2 paper on monday, but they didn't let me use a typer. They said that it wasn't that bad, and i wasn't disadvantaged that much. I only wrote about 1/2 the time. tight ass teachers
 

Lee

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though who have seen my styping style here would knkow i wioulsn't do well with atypewriter. hehe, even from thi post you can see. i tend to press two buttons at once making non-words and i can;'t be bothered to go ver and check them. if i had to write on a typer in an exam they would ned to give me 40mins extra time to check everything.....:)
why doy uo get to use a type anyway?
 

roo

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Originally posted by Sanchez#1

Anyways, I guess its true that being under different exam conditions will effect the way you do exams. But I do most of my practice essays typed (since I'm paranoid I might sprain my hand) and if you use font 14 theres not much you really need to get used to.

If you were using a dodgy laptop, then you should have had some action for complaining if you weren't happy with your marks.
easier said than done.
 

SkAnDi

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There are times when i wish i could use a keyboard to do my exams on.

Oh, to be able to type instead of to write.

It would have been the one advantage of being a netaholic, insane typing abilities 110wpm.

*sigh*

Well, guess it's back to the pen for me!

Is the change really hard because you don't seem to feel like it's "Exam" time. Like it's a change from the sitting in a room full of people furiously writing. less stress = less performance?
 

sif not 99

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that is such a rort.

whatever happened to scribes?
i could type 3 times as much as I could write in the same time and that thing about not being able to judge how much to type against write isnt very valid when most ppl look at the clock see how many marks something is allocated and then decide how much they should write, well thats the best way to do it.
 

Lee

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we had scribes in yr 10. i remebr about 3 people haa dbroken arms during the SC, so they had yr 9 scribes. but tht sux too cause scribes are usually slower than you are, even tough you are given extra time
 

Sanchez#1

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110wpm?!!?! :confused:
I thought i was a decent typer and i clock 48wpm

err....You do have fingers right skandi?

Anyways, now that i think about it they did provide scribes in year 10. I'm not sure why they get rid of them in year 12. Having a scribe would complicate things since its easier to put your thoughts to pen as you go, rather than tell the scribe and then get him/her to write it.

But some people in my school use keyboards and they don't even have any injuries. I think their reason is because they write slow, or have very poor handwriting (jin have you seen Tonky's handwriting? It makes mine look like caligraphy)
 

roo

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i had a choice to have a scribe; but i insisted on typing because of the fact that the scribe would be painfully slow and from year 9 or 10.

ok sure, maybe typing is better than writing.. but with the experience i went through, the advantages weighed out the disadvantages at the end.
 

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