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iPhone's HEIC Format Causing Some Students to Fail AP Exams, Here's How to Fix It
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Microsoft poured millions of dollars into usability testing that gave us metro UI, yet disabled users prefer to use iPhones and Macs.
It's actually a little interesting. If the user (read testers before the software rolled out) grabbed the picture from the Photos app in iOS, then there were no problems (guessing Photos auto converts to jpgs on export).
It was only if the students tried to export the photo from within the camera app (from what I understand) that the issue popped up. This, apparently, hadn't been tried in their testing.
Having these nationwide mass Beta tests for important things can cause unexpected results.
LOL, Android phones use the format as well.
There is an archived version of that webpage from 15 May 2020 that has these instructions. Clearly not “has now provided”. I do not see any source here when these instructions were posted the first time.
I would imagine something to do with plagiarism. The photo thing seems a little weird to me; a PDF would make more sense, but I can't count the number of times at work when I request documents and receive a photo from a phone.
HEIC is free to decode, no royalties are needed.
entropys
macrumors 65816
The iPhone is the most commonly used camera in the world these days. Did not these clowns test their app?
The tests started May 11.
Incorrect, MPEG LA's pool requires licensing for decoders. Additionally, some of the other pool license terms (Velos Media) are not publicly known.
Page 7, "encoder and/or decoder": https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/HEVCweb.pdf
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Some things like equations, chemical structures, and Chinese/Japanese are difficult to write on the computer. In the latter case, the IMEs used to write the languages on a Latin keyboard basically help you cheat.
Additionally, they evaluate answers based on intermediate/work steps, it will take forever to solve math problems solely by typing it in.
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alpi123
macrumors 68020
I too am annoyed at the fact a lot of websites don't support that format so I'm forced to convert my images.
I read that HEIC holds better quality, is that true?
I read that HEIC holds better quality, is that true?
College Board has more than enough money and resources to ensure this doesn’t happen but not enough competence (funny coming from a company that deals with education). Did they not test this beforehand? I doubt it.
iSRS
macrumors 6502
When you are too lazy to even bother Googling....
"HEIC isn't actually an Apple invention at all, but was developed by the MPEG group that was also responsible for the AAC format used in iTunes "
Apple didnt invent HEIC nor own the rights to it. Apple has NOTHING to do with this other than adopting the HEIF/HEIC standard. There are some Android devices that shoot HEIC too. "Devices running Android 10 support the HEIC compressed image format, a high efficiency video encoding (HEVC) specific brand of the high efficiency image file format (HEIF) as specified in ISO/IEC 23008-12. HEIC-encoded images offer better image quality with smaller file sizes as compared to JPEG files. "
SMH. Buh der Apple sux!
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casperes1996
macrumors 604
It's much easier to check a PDF for plagiarism and cheating with an automated system than a photo. In fact there are tons of these automated systems readily available that they could purchase or licence. Plagiarism is taken seriously for university where to my knowledge even the US also takes computer written documents as PDFs
I am guess than no one on this page who has responded actually either took an AP exam this year or had a student who had to.
Because Covid changed the way student had to sit for the exams. Normally students would have been in a classroom and taken the written exam and turned it in. There was NEVER an option to upload their answers before 2020.
Do you realize what College Board did in two months? They completely revamped their whole testing program. They went from a 3 hour written exam to a 1 hour electronic exam. In addition to having to implement the back end systems to conduct the exams, College Board had to rework all the exams (about 30) to adjust for the change in presentation and length of exam. It is actually pretty astounding that we even had AP exams this year.
There were multiple options and some of it depending on the type of exam and the students preference. Some of the exams (typically essay based) allowed you to type the answer on your computer and upload the file. However, not all exams lend themselves to word processing. Science and math exams require the student to solve equations and show their work. In that case, it was better for the student to write out the answer, take a picture, and submit. Some students may also be more comfortable handwriting versus typing.
It is unfortunately that students are having to deal with these types of issues on top of having their educational life disrupted. Many AP students are seniors that have lost their proms, senior trips, and graduation ceremonies. AP exams help with college, this is just added stress of not being able to submit after completing all the effort. (FYI, there is a time limit on the exam. There is no time for students to start researching why their photo won't upload. If you don't submit your answers by the time limit, you don't get credit.)
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Because Covid changed the way student had to sit for the exams. Normally students would have been in a classroom and taken the written exam and turned it in. There was NEVER an option to upload their answers before 2020.
Do you realize what College Board did in two months? They completely revamped their whole testing program. They went from a 3 hour written exam to a 1 hour electronic exam. In addition to having to implement the back end systems to conduct the exams, College Board had to rework all the exams (about 30) to adjust for the change in presentation and length of exam. It is actually pretty astounding that we even had AP exams this year.
There were multiple options and some of it depending on the type of exam and the students preference. Some of the exams (typically essay based) allowed you to type the answer on your computer and upload the file. However, not all exams lend themselves to word processing. Science and math exams require the student to solve equations and show their work. In that case, it was better for the student to write out the answer, take a picture, and submit. Some students may also be more comfortable handwriting versus typing.
It is unfortunately that students are having to deal with these types of issues on top of having their educational life disrupted. Many AP students are seniors that have lost their proms, senior trips, and graduation ceremonies. AP exams help with college, this is just added stress of not being able to submit after completing all the effort. (FYI, there is a time limit on the exam. There is no time for students to start researching why their photo won't upload. If you don't submit your answers by the time limit, you don't get credit.)
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A 3rd party image submission form with extremely limited supported formats not even doing the most basic task of alerting the user that the image was the wrong format is not the fault of apple for using a modern image format by default on their devices.
It's even worse when a submission as important as this can go through entirely and appear to be completed on the users end.
snowatom
macrumors regular
Not only related to this incident. But people today should put a little more interest in the technology they use, instead of just mindless tapping and watching tiktok, without any interest in how things work. Data responsibility is none existing after the cloud came to reality. Young people don’t care about where data lies, what format, and how it’s kept. This is a big worry, now and for future generations.
casperes1996
macrumors 604
That makes sense; Though I do believe students should be taught how to use digital systems for those things. LaTeX for writing out science and math for example, or CAS systems like Maple.
That's more about the curriculum than the specific situation however, and as mentioned my sympathies are fully with the students - I agree with your earlier point that under the Covid circumstances, revamping everything and figuring out solutions for all of this under such pressure has not put the schools in an easy position, and it's definitely worth also acknowledging that they actually managed to get something up that works, in spite of the issues that may be with it - I praise that effort.
That said, I do think there should be some flexibility for technical issues like this. There should've been an emergency help desk the students could've contacted, and with proof that they were trying to get help from the school's IT department, an ability to get dispensation for late hand-ins or similar. Ideally issues like this don't occur of course, but in a situation like this with such a new and untested system, one most both be flexible in acknowledging the school's efforts in finding a solution; but the schools should also be flexible in acknowledging the students' efforts in working under completely new conditions with an unfamiliar system, and accept technical issues as irrelevant to grading the exam, if everything else concerning the exam was handled within regulation.
himanshumodi
macrumors 6502a
It looks like everyone is migrating to teams though!!!
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What now??? You need to buy a license to use HEIC??
There is. Anyone who had issues can sign up to take a makeup exam in June. It will be different questions, but the same format. Hopefully the students will have fixed the issue and changed the default format on their camera.
himanshumodi
macrumors 6502a
I agree. Even the tech guys are completely losing touch with first principles. Everything keeps getting abstracted more and more. And no one even tried to learn how things work at a lower layer.
Cycom
Suspended
Can’t stand Live Photo’s. Worthless feature.
HEIC is essentially a single-frame HEVC movie. You need to license HEVC patents.
Similar to H.264/AVC, separate HEVC licenses are required for commercial use. (For example, see section 14.D of Apple's EULA https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSCatalina.pdf)
itsmilo
Suspended
At my university you still have to write your coding exam like java on a piece of paper, only pencil allowed. I basically just memorized lines by heart not even sure what I was actually doing lol
casperes1996
macrumors 604
Honestly I don’t see why they can’t just accept the first exam, even if it was handed in late, as long as there’s proof it was actually handed in before the deadline, but under technical issues. - That said, this solution is of course way better than nothing 🙂
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That’s frankly ****ed up... I haven’t handed in anything that hasn’t been done on computer since 7th grade. Mandatory since first year of high school I think
It’s understandable for the College Board to not taking into consideration of certain file formats, given their tight schedule to bring up online the exam. But, it illustrates clearly the stubbornness and arrogance deep underneath their mindsets to not accept unrecognized formats as raw files, so that they can be processed later.
No software can ever be all-mighty, you need to always leave room for unknown stuff, so that real people could come back and review.
No software can ever be all-mighty, you need to always leave room for unknown stuff, so that real people could come back and review.