http://x.com/i/article/2071398729844973568
Many users praised standalone Scantron machines for tamper-resistant scoring thanks to their offline simplicity and security, while others recalled negative past associations with the devices.
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The Scantron: These Machines Were Not Networked And Nearly Unhackable.
Today we are obsessed with networked computers, cloud scoring, and AI proctoring, it is easy to overlook one of the most elegantly powerful pieces of educational and electoral technology ever built: the standalone
Scantron optical mark recognition (OMR) test-scoring machine and voting tabulators. Models like the iconic 888P+ (and its predecessors and contemporaries from the 1970s through the 1990s) did not need an external computer, operating system, or network connection.
A single specially marked answer sheet—functioning as what users often called the “key card” or key form was all that was required to program the entire scoring logic.
Read how they worked.
http://x.com/i/article/2071398729844973568

@BrianRoemmele the tradeoff is always security vs flexibility i guess
are we ok with it?

@BrianRoemmele https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izddjAp_N4I

@BrianRoemmele scantrons give me ptsd

@BrianRoemmele This one’s are unbelievable

@BrianRoemmele that's wicked smawt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kFjCuuh6vI

@BrianRoemmele not what I expected but I fw it
I used Scantrons many times over the years in multiple school districts, first likely circa' 1996 or so. And the 'tech' carried over into schools as recent as the 2010s albeit usually for small-scale specific quizzes and tests.
Beyond the typical testing uses, I also adopted them for use as a 'standard set' by creating a master key sheet that a student could compare to their own 'pre-knowledge' against a series of questions and/or tasks leading into a project. They wouldn't see the master of course, but their scanned sheet would produce a correct/not correct output for them to ID the tasks or questions they then needed to do more work on.
I had acquired a couple unused Scantrons that were set for disposal in one school about 25 years ago that I kept with me into a two more classrooms for this same 'pre-test' process. There was no cheating/hacking for sure.

@BrianRoemmele Scantrons worked because they were dumb and offline.
Add networks and AI, suddenly you're fighting bots, hacks, failures.
sometimes the simplest tool is hardest to break.

@BrianRoemmele Security in simplicity.
@BrianRoemmele Easy hack was to when in doubt C your way out

@BrianRoemmele Ryan Mallet agrees

@0xV0LYX @BrianRoemmele depends on the threat model honestly. most people trading flexibility for security are protecting against threats they'll never face while blocking use cases they hit every day

@BrianRoemmele #2

