Cheating Is Harder When Your Teacher Is Not an Idiot.

When I chose teaching as my profession, I did not anticipate the amount of energy I would expend to confront and quash cheating. But then, I began my career before Google revolutionized students’ abilities to deprive themselves of actual learning.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the 2020-21 school year, our school district began using Google Classoom as the primary vehicle of instruction for teaching and learning. Students were assignmed Chromebooks with restricted settings, and by way of Google Classroom, teachers could choose to lock those Chromebooks when students were assigned a quiz.

The only problem is the all-or-nothingness of locking the Chromebook if the quiz includes a research component requiring use of the internet. As a teacher, at this point, I cannot approve certain sites and block others in order to facilitate the security of my research-based quiz in Google Classroom.

What I learned this week was that some…