Google Workspace: A space to cheat or a friend we need?
Learning together but learning apart. From the students’ perspective, no one has got our back when we feel lost and stuck about what the teacher discussed. Taking a nerve-cracking exam, nobody is there to tap our backs. Is there truly no one there?
Thinking that the internet exists, Google serves as a wide-open book that we desperately wanted. Google is not our cheating tool rather, it is our closest friend in surviving a difficult lesson that will enlighten us, allow us to be in the flow, and not be left behind because we were afraid to ask the teacher to repeat the lecture. Not even our closest friend can enlighten us from afar, definitely not from the screen, and probably because even she may also be lost and stuck.
Google, the company, and its corresponding product Google Workspace is not a space for students to cheat. But it has become a space for institutions and organizations to cheat the cheaters. Surprise!
In the middle of this pandemic, technology has emerged as the most effective method and solution for enriching people's lives and educating students. Teachers and students can communicate safely and freely while avoiding face-to-face communication in order to follow social distancing protocols through the use of the internet, computers, and even smartphones.
This school year, Calauag Central College Inc. adopted Google Workspace for its learning delivery. Google Workspace, formerly known as G Suite, is a collection of communication and collaboration software aimed for organizations. The collaboration of these software includes teaching and learning technologies such as Google Classroom, Google Meet, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Slides and Forms.
There are various benefits and all information are readily available on its website. But for the purpose of this article, the best benefit is that the Google Workspace is a great cheat sheet for the school and teachers since it allows them to perform everything in one package.
Majority of students believe that they can actually cheat with Google Workspace. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but that is just a dream. You, as a student, (or even those teachers reading this) may not be aware right now, but I am here to spill the tea!
I know students still believe that they can get away easily with switching tabs or windows to seek for the answers when there is an examination in a google form. Well, I’m sorry to say "pero kabahan ka na." Despite the fact that the teacher may not track it or be informed because Google Form does not have such a feature, the school can still choose to use third-party tools such as Autoproctor, which can be integrated with Google Form to provide such monitoring functions and teachers will get notified of it. The teacher can also choose to create the quiz in an open-note format with open-ended questions to eliminate the possibility of cheating.
Another intriguing aspect of this tool is that after reading this, you may not be able to just copy and paste your works from the internet that and turn them in on Google Classroom because it can identify plagiarism. It assists teachers in combating plagiarism by using the tool "Originality reports" as a plagiarism checker.
But even if the school does not use this anti-cheating software, in the end, your decision is your own to deal with. If you decide to cheat, you will only be cheating yourself, not your teacher and not your school.
Students should be reminded on a daily basis to utilize technology responsibly for learning because this platform is not for cheating, but for education. It is a means to support teaching and learning in order to deliver quality education even at a distance or what we call online.
We have been experiencing the rise of technology for decades. We are currently witnessing technological advancements that has given birth to a technologically sophisticated generation of individuals.
It has become a fundamental necessity for human beings, and given the current global pandemic, everyone has come to rely on technology. Having said that, it has become more useful than ever. We are obliged to use various online platforms to restart the life we had before the pandemic because it prompted us to stop stepping outside our homes and stop engaging physically with individuals other than our family.
More than just a health crisis, it resulted in an educational crisis as well. Because of the suddenness, ambiguity, and volatility of COVID-19, the education sector has been rushing to accommodate the shifting of the learning landscape.
But, thanks to technological breakthroughs, and the CCC’s unrelenting passion in pursuit of its mission, vision and core values, education lives on and will never truly stop.
About the Author
Bea Pauline Deapera, a 4th year BSED student, believes that being less talkative allows her writings to express more things that cannot be said and on which silence is impossible.
