Check out the slideshow on this site showing 10 common ways in which students use technology to cheat. It brings up some interesting points about what constitutes learning, what's the nature of good assessment, and what kinds of tools should and should not be allowed to be used in class or on tests.
As teachers, it's important to keep up with the technology that our students use-- if we are nervous around technology and uncomfortable using it, we only place ourselves farther away from our students' lives. Our students are digital natives-- by knowing about the tools they use and knowing how to speak their language, we show them that their lives are interesting to us, that we are lifelong learners, and that we recognize the power their technology has when used for learning. That last part is our most important job-- I was always surprised at how much my students knew about using the latest smartphones, applications, and programs, but how little potential they saw for these programs to be used to learn. It was my role as a teacher to take them down that road.
One thing I took from this slideshow is that we need to re-think the format and substance of the assessments we give. If our assessments focus on simple recall, factual knowledge, and memorization-- basically anything a computer can do faster and more reliably than a person-- what are we really asking our students to learn? Outdated skills that won't enable them to be competitive in the job market? If our tests are grounded in real-world application, 21st-century skills, and opportunities for real mastery of the work, then cheating either won't be possible or students won't want to cheat because they'll be vested in the interesting, challenging, meaningful work.
