No, it’s not cheating because the ask was “something” not “some program”
In US colleges at least (only because that’s where I have personal experience…not because I believe standards are any higher or lower here), this is cheating if they led their professor to believe that it was indeed the raspberry pi sending out an email rather than someone at the back of the class.
They did use the hardware provided, and did use software to accomplish a goal. If the teacher just wanted to test what problem solving skills the students walked in, I’d say that’s a fair result.
For anyone not getting why this is cheating, try this. Pretend you are the teacher. You saw students pull this stunt and say that it was a live demo. Would you feel like you were deceived if later you found out it was not in fact how they presented it? (I'm honestly unsure how you can answer this in the negative)
Or how about you watch an ad of someone taking to a box and the box responding, then you buy the box and it's a pile of rubber bands and paper clips. Would you want your money back?
But what if the Pi was only ever meant as a story-telling device to get the students thinking about the kinds of things computer programs can do?
Sure, some of students would be able tell a story by building a functioning program, but dvsfish simply found another way to tell theirs.
>> It was our first comp sci class ever
>> asked to create "something"
It doesn't matter what that "something" was if you are claiming that you made "something" else. The lie is not necessarily the final result, it is the telling of the final result. The context of the whole thread is also about deceit because rtfa.