North Carolina requires test takers disable MacBook Pro Touch Bar for bar exam [u]
Prospective lawyers wanting to attend February's North Carolina Bar Examination will have to disable the Touch Bar if they're bringing along Apple's 2016 MacBook Pro, according to an announcement.
Before the start of the exam, a proctor will ask if anyone is using the laptop and have either another proctor or an ExamSoft technician ensure the feature is disabled, the state's Board of Law Examiners said. The Touch Bar must already be off prior to entering the examination site.
Instructions note that the feature can be disabled by going into the Keyboard menu under System Preferences, clicking the drop-down for "Touch Bar Shows," then picking Expanded Control Strip.
The board didn't explain its policy, but it's presumably concerned about cheating. The Touch Bar is designed to replace physical function keys with context-sensitive touch commands -- a programmer could, however, conceivably write software that would display test answers.
The Touch Bar is so configurable that people have managed to get games such as Doom running on it, even if they're not playable in any practical sense.
Removing the technology can make a Pro more difficult to use, forcing owners to click through menus to accomplish common tasks.
Update: Other states are also coming down hard on MacBook with Touch Bar as it pertains to bar examinations. California, for example, will not allow applicants to bring the laptop to the upcoming February 2017 exam because it "contains certain embedded features that makes it problematic for use" during test administration.
Before the start of the exam, a proctor will ask if anyone is using the laptop and have either another proctor or an ExamSoft technician ensure the feature is disabled, the state's Board of Law Examiners said. The Touch Bar must already be off prior to entering the examination site.
Instructions note that the feature can be disabled by going into the Keyboard menu under System Preferences, clicking the drop-down for "Touch Bar Shows," then picking Expanded Control Strip.
The board didn't explain its policy, but it's presumably concerned about cheating. The Touch Bar is designed to replace physical function keys with context-sensitive touch commands -- a programmer could, however, conceivably write software that would display test answers.
The Touch Bar is so configurable that people have managed to get games such as Doom running on it, even if they're not playable in any practical sense.
Removing the technology can make a Pro more difficult to use, forcing owners to click through menus to accomplish common tasks.
Update: Other states are also coming down hard on MacBook with Touch Bar as it pertains to bar examinations. California, for example, will not allow applicants to bring the laptop to the upcoming February 2017 exam because it "contains certain embedded features that makes it problematic for use" during test administration.
Comments
Seems like a "new scary" technology for these guys. You can cheat with any tech nowadays.
Bar exam...
I'll be here all week, folks.
/s
i used my TI-85 to cheat in college. Then again it was open book exams.
Come on, they are allow to use a laptop during the test and if someone is going to cheat there are hundreds of way to do that on a Mac without drawing much attention and they are worried about the touch bar.
My son told me this fall Apple watch were no longer allow during testing, they caught people texting each others on their watches to share answers. Now I did not think of that but the kids figured out quickly. It is amazing how educators have not realize that making rules only encourage kids to find a way around them and all they have is time to figure it out.
I hated open book test, it usually meant most kids failed since the Prof knew if you did not know the material no open book was going to help you. I had HP 15C calculator which did lots of advance functions that most calculators of the time could not do and the Prof did not know this and those few of us who had them did well in his class then he figured out and change the test to us symbols verse number which meant to you have to manually work through the problems since he provided no numbers.
As for abiding by the morals clause, yea, lawyers can be just as untruthful as politicians and common people. After all, we're just humans. (That's a lame excuse, I know.)
yep my 15C is from 1985, and on its second set of batteries and I still use it today, tried to show my kids how to use it and they wanted nothing to do with it. I love the calculator and it was worth every penny I spent on it. Just shows you how good HP was at engineering things.
My son told me he takes examine on the computer for college, it requires he log into a website. While logged into the website they know if you are doing anything else on your computer. I am curious how they do that since he uses a Mac and it is much harder to take control of the computer via the web. But he said kids have gotten caught trying to find answers on the computer while taking the test.
Frankly, I find it almost unbelievable that lawyers-to-be are allowed to bring their own computers for the test. What other high-stakes tests allow that?
Within the next couple of years we are going to implement computer based testing where all tests are taken on the computer. These have to be state approved devices with keyboards and they will run a special browser that locks the entire computer down and all you can get to is this browser, even if you restart the device.