Like it's not tough enough to be a parent or a teacher, about 60% of students admit in surveys that they cheat on their schoolwork. And these are not all garden-variety cheaters today. Students have a lot of high-tech gadgetry at their disposal, the Los Angeles times reports, such as harmless-looking pens that can scan a test and send it to a remote location (like their best friend's computer). They can even get cheating instructions on the Internet. Here's an excerpt from the story:

One click of the Internet opens a world of possibilities and temptations, devious and ingenious, with Web sites devoted to the best cheating practices, and cheating tutorials on YouTube.

One YouTube compilation offers such strategies as taping answers under a tie and designing a T-shirt with a cheat sheet printed on the front in a form that can be overlooked as a logo.

In another, a young man recounts his method of stretching a rubber band over a textbook and writing answers on it. When the rubber band isn't stretched, his writing looks like harmless ink stains. Yet another video explains how to remove a wrapper from a drink bottle and create a duplicate carrying test answers.

Although camera phones with pictures of an answer sheet, and text messages from friends outside the classroom are still the most ubiquitous electronic techniques, many schools have caught on and now ban devices such as cellphones and iPods during tests.

More recent innovations are button cameras, which have a wireless connection to a laptop computer that can then capture stolen test items, and pens capable of scanning a test and sending a video signal to a remote laptop to save the images.

Scary.

If you're strugging with this issue, there are some good commentaries from Michael Josephson, creator of the Charactor Counts program.