Copying from the internet is cheating (sometimes)

I'm not so worried about students sharing answers to homework assignments...I expect students to collaborate and help each other learn. Where I really worry is around major "tasks" or projects which are done at home or over a period of several days and, of course, tests/exams. If students are surreptitiously sharing information/answers, then the assignment becomes invalid.

Cell phones are a major source of worry in high schools today. Students are often text messaging, watching TV/movies, surfing the net or who knows what else when they should be attending to the lesson or working on a test. The cameras in the phones create a whole new world of cheating possibilities. As far as I know, this is a problem in every school all across the country. As of yet, I haven't heard of any really effective solution.

Open-ended projects are one way to challenge students to use the resources of the internet to come up with creative solutions. The major drawback is that if the assignment is truly open-ended, there is no "answer key" and no right answer...a teacher's nightmare.

I've seen plagiarism as blatant as copying a book review off Amazon and pasting it, word for word, including grammatical and spelling mistakes into an English assignment. Other students have tried to copy ideas by changing a few words or phrases. The social science teachers have "Turnitin.com" which helps them detect plagiarism...I haven't heard of anything similar for math and science.