Wake County tackles online cheating

"I do feel like the temptation is there," said Iyaira Williams, a Broughton High School senior.

Williams is an exemplary student and says she would never actually cheat, but she knows just how easy it can be for those who want to.

"It's as easy as you can type it in to Google. You can type a lot of stuff on Google, and they give you a lot," she said.

Google can be used to find the answers to math problems along with the steps to find the answer. It can also be used to find information not often properly sourced. It's truly a new world for educators.

"It's different now looking on the internet versus going to the library and pulling out a book and trying to copy paragraphs," said Dr. David Brooks, who has been a teacher for decades and is the magnet coordinator at Broughton High School.

It also specifically calls out the use of translation programs that can be used to help with foreign language classes.

"The world has changed, and the environment in which our kids learn is very different than it used to be, so our expectations have got to grow with that," said Brian Pittman, Wake County's director for high school programs.

Teachers are trying to make classes more "cheat proof" by requiring students to turn in drafts of papers or to write papers that include more personal information or opinion.

"Students are really being asked to do more complex tasks that really are much harder to copy from another resource," Brooks said.

Wake County crafted its new honor code with student input.

"I think what our students really said was, 'We just want to know what are the rules to play by' because they wanted to do it the right way," Pittman said.

Wake County is one of the first school systems in the country to address cheating with online resources in writing. Other local school systems, including Chapel Hill-Carrboro, are working to add new language to existing honor codes.