Yes. The complexity (number of apps/websites) of the on-line learning in public NYC schools has gone crazy. So far this year my children have been issues 3+ sets of usernames/passwords for sites they are meant to log time on. At least one was an insane marketing/startup useless website- with things pre-logged in my child's own webpage. Yuck. What a waste of time- when you could be reading together (2nd grader).
4
Kids and parents must deal with school systems that feel like they overnight knew (without any doubts or concern) "21st century learning." Educators clearly don't fully understand the tech that they use and parents must pretend that they appreciate the clunky half-in modernization. Most parents had a grasp on computers because of jobs decades earlier and so we were hesitant about tech in the classroom- not because we were stuck in papery old ways- but because we were worried about the loose oversight in the classroom that exposes our kids to unsafe Google images, information tracking, and fewer real-life experiences. Parents who questioned this and warned the classrooms to be careful were made to feel stuck in the 20th century. Tech-savvy Gen X has never been given much credit as the ones who are the kid's parents- but we sure knew when schools were in over their heads. We still worry about the ability of schools to know what they are doing as they still show us that they can barely send out a working hyperlink or consistently track grades on e-school.
1
@Trerra What your parents, teachers and you know or don‘t know is besides the point. It‘s what google, facewash etc know about what you know; or have to look up.
I guess Orwell is no longer required reading in schools.
1
Exactly.
1
Who cares? America deserves Americans. I've gotten to the point where I just don't care because Americans should know better and never act like it. I'll take my piece and get out.
Kids Shouldn’t Have to Sacrifice Privacy for Education
Our laws offer students very little protection against the wiles of the technology industry.
http://study.result.pk/institutes/schools-pakistan/
1
Democratic politicians are addicted to technological gimmickry and Republican politicians are wedded to money and the wealthy. And, to a lesser extent, vice versa as well. And the business model of Silicon Valley is based not only on scamming clients and hooking kids, but also on the delusion that any real regulation of it spells economic disaster; a myth which establishment politicians of both parties readily embrace. With digital privacy, as with many other issues, the wrecking ball of the decrepit and dysfunctional two party duopoly smashes common sense, crushes policy effectiveness, and leaves huge roadblocks to progress.
1
Today we argue about what student data will be shared; tomorrow we will have to decide what data and information will be shared with students - and the public in general. It will be tantamount to deciding if students should be told the world is round in the eighteenth century.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a linguistic "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds would see the survival of a particular group of people or a belief as more important than the survival of all. When we understand all this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity; however, part of the journey will entail teaching children that all fixed beliefs are destructive. That's going to stir things up quite a bit.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
Privacy in America should not be sacrificed for education, as in it's possible to keep education advancing without sacrifice, tradeoff with privacy, and any loss of privacy that appears to be occurring with advance of education is illusory, that it's possible to keep both in the future?
Take it from me, not only a failure in the educational system (high school dropout) but recommended for psychiatric treatment that the educational system has for who knows how long been among the systems of society most compromising of a person's privacy, in fact privacy is compromised long before the child grows to understand concepts such as privacy and personal dignity, etc.
What the educational system does is compromise your privacy by making it known to yourself and all people of future importance where you stand within the social system at large as dictated by the educational system, meaning obviously you get your grades and they reflect who you are to yourself and all people of future importance so you automatically have a stunningly profound compromise of privacy which affects you no matter your silly and superficial understandings of privacy such as whether or not anyone sees you in your house or when you go to the bathroom.
Not only does the educational system compromise your privacy it tells you who you are to yourself and everybody else and therefore how you must comport yourself and how you should expect to be treated and how people will treat you in the future. Obvious.
C'mon people. HOW do you expect the rich to get even richer if we worry about trivialities like this?!? PRIORITIES!!
2
The incestuous relationship between technology and education is not new. It's all about the money.
Readers may not know that this was true with textbooks, long before the tech craze.
And the most egregious intersection of money and policy comes from the Phonics First movement. When George Bush was governor of Texas, a literal conspiracy arose to push teaching phonics is all schools. It was not the education department or educators who pressed the movement. It was the publishers of Phonics First materials and Bush was the sucker who let them under the tent flap. The rest is history.
Phonics instruction can be part of a balanced approach to reading, but it's primacy is all about money.
A life without privacy is a life without dignity.
3
It is the capitalist culture . Nothing escapes to profit. Profit enters every fold or page of the internet. Since a few months an advertising comes up in the middle of a page you are reading . And to adapt this marketing to your personal potential desires, those thieves try to gather information about you to better direct their tentacules towards you. In Europe we have laws against these practices . But we still have to deal with these huge US corporations who manage to invade the market without paying any taxes : Apple, Yahoo, Google, Starbucks, Mc Donald, ...etc
I wish schools taught and modeled proper online and other tech-consumption hygiene.
Use of tech and the internet is a little like teeth brushing: teachers and the people who comprise the administration may choose not to floss or brush themselves in their personal lives -- and suffer the cavity and gum disease consequences -- but they have no business leading young people astray by failing to teach proper oral hygiene even as they encourage and allow and require our children to eat sugary sweets because they are free or the teacher forgot to read the ingrwdients
1
"We don’t want children to fear that anything they say or do online could be used against them someday. "
Sorry, too late. By a long shot.
I'm curious Mr. Gosh and Mr. Steyer, what you think of the App Class Dojo? This free app provides teachers with a tool to monitor student behavior. Through the app, teachers give students a plus or minus point etc. Then the app adds up the points for rewards or consequences. In some classrooms, teachers put the student's individual Class Dojo points up on the screen for every one to see. It's not only a purely behavioral approach to teaching and classroom management ( teachers don't need to make eye contact with students, let alone have a quiet conversation). The app can track points by individual student, creating a log of student behavior over time. This is a terrible tool for teachers who are consciously or unconsciously biased, who favor girls over boys, thin over chubby, white over brown, etc. The app is free because the developers want to make in-roads in schools, not because the app offers more to the classroom than adding marbles to a jar, giving checkmarks, or moving a clip up and down. I raised my concerns about privacy with my suburban California school district. They minimized my concerns and as far as I know, didn't look into it further. Concerned about your child's electronic privacy in schools? You have to stick your neck out and opt out if you are concerned, but most parents don't.
1
The issue is proper funding for education, again. If schools had funding to commission the education technology they need, they wouldn't be forced to accept discounted software that they pay for with students' personal information. As it is they accept "help" from tech giants that comes with many strings attached and begins to assemble the data portfolio that will make children fully quantified units of data property long before they graduate.
2
Our kids are home schooled with a blend of textbooks and tech. We do not subscribe to the absurdity that all kids of a certain age should learn the same things at the same rate. For socialization we send them to a physical activity of their choosing, dance, gymnastics or the favorite, taekwondo.
Two also belong to a chess club. An adult logs in to all tech requiring a sign in, no children's names provided, ever. No Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat. We also have a VPN, not perfect but better than nothing.
3
The factory model of education, where every child is put on a conveyor belt and taught every subject at the same time and the same pace, is grossly suppressing the potential of our children and the future of our country. Case in point: 66% of our children cannot read fluently by the 4th grade. To claim the old-fashioned way, is the best way, is simply false as the results of the past 50 years prove. The old fashion way only worked for the affluent who can afford tutors and private schools when their child fell behind in a subject. The sole way to disrupt this reality is personalized education that does real time assessment on students and provides customized lesson plans. This requires data. The problem with this article is it leaves the impression that all data collection is bad. Performance data that is anonymized and that is completely sanitized from association with the child who will become the consumer-of-the-future, is what is needed. A federal law that standardized and clarified rules for data collection for optimization of personalized education would be welcomed by all ethically grounded ed-tech companies whose intention and mission is simply helping all children achieve their potential.
2
@Andy Butler
With respect, this is complete nonsense. I don't know about California, but in Canada we already have a publicly-funded "technology" that provides personalized education with real time assessment and customized lesson plans. We call this technology a "teacher." Not only can this technology assess the performance and needs of individual students, she or he can also provide real-time and personalized (in the literal sense of the term) feedback to students on both their academic performance and social interactions. Moreover, our teacher technology functions as a highly localized data repository that is far less susceptible to hacking than centralized databases, while still being accessible to parents and children who need to access this information.
Unfortunately, this teacher technology has been gradually undermined for the past 50 years by miserly funding and inadequately tested theories of education that have fared poorly compared to the traditional methods employed by other countries.
Meanwhile, technologies have arisen that, at least anecdotally (research is still ongoing) are very effective at distracting and fragmenting the child's attention, mainly for the purposes of serving up advertising, establishing social control, and undermining their ability to distinguish between the public and the private, reality and fiction, and truth and lies, and thereby laying the groundwork for totalitarianism.
You can take your "disruption" and shove it.
1
Indeed these laws should be enacted and not watered down by the very people who are profiting from our children. Unfortunately, Congress has been in recess for years and accomplished so little of value as to be useless.
"We don’t want children to fear that anything they say or do online could be used against them someday. "
Of course we want them to fear it. All of us who are middle aged and older were warned about things going on our 'permanent record' before such a thing existed. The grown-ups wanted us to fear the thing that did not yet exist.
5
Privacy regulation ultimately just favors companies like Google and Facebook who have the resources to commit to more privacy overhead where other companies do not. GDPR is a good example. Facebook and Google actually increased their market share of advertising vendors after GDPR and consolidated their grip on online advertising in Europe because of it.
Do kids deserve privacy? Absolutely. Safety online begins at home. I can remember when the internet was new and scary, the conventional wisdom was for parents to not allow their children on the computer unsupervised until they could be trusted to use it responsibly, and to ask permission before they signed up for anything.
This outcry smacks to me of letting children play in traffic and then saying we need more traffic laws and monitoring of drivers to prevent children from being struck by cars.
1
@Joel
The article is about what children are being required to do online at school — where parents are less able to immediately intervene and say that they are not allowed to participate.
2
Finally somebody noticed. I've always been flabbergasted by how natural the presence of Google in every classroom where my children have been seemed natural to everyone.
As a college professor, I forbid the presence of phones and laptops in my classes and I tell my students that I don't do Google Docs. I see the college seminar as one of the last places where one can get a real learning and thinking experience. And yes, I use chalk.
11
It’s a sellout to the system that’s trying to find a magic bullet for education.
The more prestigious schools will use teachers, books and
discussions to enhance knowledge.
Learning was never based on what games you can play on
an electronic device, ask a kid what he learned on a pad and they can’t tell you.( No speaking or listening skills.)
Ask a kid who used books and discussion and then you have a thinker and problem solver.
10
The Chan Zuckerberg initiative should be called the Chan Zuckerberg invasive. So much weight has been given to assessments, data, and standardized testing that the Chan Zuckerberg initiative looks somewhat innocent as an educational tool for some people. Don't believe it. Grocery stores already stock items at the level of the eyes of kids, commercials manipulate children's wants, and all that is bad enough for parents. Leave it alone Chan Zuckerberg - don't you have enough to do answering questions because you can't even control Facebook? Why would anyone trust you ?
4
Our children’s privacy - and our own - is willingly for sale. We say “Yes!” to this every time we defund our schools and vote for candidates that support businesses’ advantage over responsibility to citizens and every time we sign up for a membership card to get “deals”. Perhaps the real conversation we need to have as Americans is: Are we really willing to pay the price of Democracy? I think the evidence every day proves NO.
6
I find it interesting that wealthy parents are now very involved in having their children educated without resorting to modern technology. I think it’s more than just the loss of privacy at play in this trend. I wonder if they are concerned that these more modern methods are less effective. If so, our children have lost their privacy for an inferior result.
8
There is indeed a place for technology in our classroom but why collect data that is not primarily for use in strengthening our students' skills? There is no need for a vendor to know the intimate details of its users under the age of majority.
Technology is not going away and the best educators will use it to enhance learning, not make it the be all and end all of learning. Paper and pencil is still necessary in schools as are the arts and physical education. We want well rounded citizens, not automatons who can communicate with machines but not with each other.
I am very glad my 32 years in a classroom started before the "digital revolution" so I can see the difference both good and bad of the infusion of technology in our schools. The results are still a "mixed bag".
4
This article is right up my alley. Thanks for shedding light on this alarming trend. My district, in my opinion, just went to the dark side by going "all in" to Google's tangled web of docs, sheets, drive and classroom. I mean everything is done through their drive now. We share docs, etc. through Google and they are pushing us to sign our students up to classroom.
Well, this old salt will not adhere to their wishes. Any time I do have my students log onto something? I NEVER use their personal information past their first name and last initial. I just might share this article today with my 5th graders.
10
Unless you first get their parents' informed consent each time you use kids' actual names, even if "just" first names and last initial, you should use a pseudonym.
We know kids who have uncommon first names, particularly for the place they live and the school they are in. It would be VERY easy to personally identify them by matching first name, or even initials, to their school name and/or location, to their address, or in smaller towns, just the town name. Even more so when the child's grade and/or age and sometimes even his/her birthdate is associated with the account.
It's very easy to assign kids a made up word or short series of random letters and numbers, keep a paper roster of which kids goes with which pseudonym, and use that. Of course, you'll want to give parents all the information as well.
1
Even if there was a solution to the ubiquity of modern technology in American schools, and there is not any, American children will still be exposed to the hazards of the violence and vulgarity of present day American culture, as well as the inadequate funding of schools and the ferocious competitiveness of American education. I have friendly advice for young Americans who want to have children and that is to consider moving to a more humane country.
8
@Robert Dole It is not the schools that are inhumane, it is our society that values status and money. Real education is a bother.
1
Somebody should look into the questionnaire that you have to complete to sign up for the SAT and/or ACT. They request a ton of personal data about the student, much of which can't be skipped. If you want to go to college, you have to take the test, to take the test you have to hand over a mountain of personal data- it's coercive and wrong. What do they do with the data? Sell it of course. We can tell by the mail we get. Does the data get sold to colleges and affect the admissions process? Who knows? But somebody should find out.
10
The threat is real, though it's straight out of science fiction from the 50's: Invasion Of The Body Snatchers was a serious warning. Private thought and action are essential for creativity and independent thinking. That's why they are being threatened by corporations who want to design your child by algorithms and logos. Remember when cookie manufacturers began paying to have math problems such as "how many chocolate chips are in this (famous brand) cookie" inserted into text books?
Coming up with solutions is far easier than practicing them, I know. But the path to freedom for our children is not through Google or Facebook. We all must resist. It can be done.To coin a phrase: Just say no. Say no to any request not essential to you child's education. Say no when Google pays for tech devices, or when your child's mind is invaded by marketers in exchange for learning. That's a Devil's again and it only goes one way. Remember that the Gettysburg Address was not written on an iPad, nor was the Declaration of Independence. All it takes is paper and pencil and a brain. Be a proud Luddite, in its original sense, which was not against progress, but against the domination of machinery at the expense of creative thought.
7
All jobs are being downsized by AI & robotics. Of course kids shouldn't have to sacrifice privacy for an education.
Technology is a great tool for managing larger and lager numbers of anything including humans. Including education. However, the real, valuable education takes place within relationships--teacher to student and student to student--together they grapple with and master knowledge and skills.
That technology used to manage humans is less successful than when humans do it is irrelevant to the CEOs, decision makers; they send their children to excellently funded schools with low teacher-student ratios.
6
My children's school district has put everything online this year. It started with their medical history in order to participate in sports. School districts are underfunded all over the country. California is worse off then others. Depending on what stats you use California per pupil spending is either in the bottom 5th or around the fiftieth percentile. For a state with a large portion of its population near or below the poverty line and large portion of ELD students, the funding is woefully lacking. Because of this, many schools embrace Google's "free" software and dirt cheap chrome books. Other companies offer to make things easier and more efficient which allows schools to save on employee costs, paper,and wear and tear on office machinery. I demanded paper forms the first year and refused to fill out online emergency cards eventually they sent me a paper to make corrections but the school personnel made my student feel like he was to blame for my non compliance. Don't get me started on grading software that tracks your kids academic progress, test scores, parents eductional attainment, and any special programs ( GATE, Special ed., ELD and others). My advice is resist. Know your rights and don't bow to pressure. Your child is entitled to a free public education and have a right to privacy. Also, the next time an education bond is on the ballot vote yes. Our unwillingness to fully fund that education allowed tech companies in with their Trojan horse.
7
Having worked in schools throughout the 21st Century, my impression is that too often schools are using technology to try appear "up with the times," but in ways that are behind the times.
When I came to schools from working in media and technology I thought it quaint how colleagues would enthuse about "21st Century education" and roll out the most basic tools of search, email and data sharing. However, I gradually became alarmed when I noticed that turn into out-sourcing teaching to tech. Here's another Youtube video, now make PowerPoints, use this app to learn math, grammar, world languages, etc. The most skillful teachers use these tools as supplements, but too many use them as substitutes.
It's far too rare to meet a teacher or school administrator well versed in the data-gathering or privacy issues discussed in this article, especially in regard to the specific digital tools they're giving to students. Perhaps worse, it's even rarer to find much knowledge of the neuroscience connected to young, developing brains and bodies using these tools. (Or, for that matter, the effect of closely held screens on early childhood onset myopia, sedentary habits on physical health, etc.)
Please consider one thing, though. Teachers who are observant, and face to face with students, do sometimes see that something is "off." However, they find it all but impossible to get anywhere with their concerns when raising them with school administrators, who get the final call on these issues .
14
I feel so fortunate that my son, who is 31, missed this dependence on devices and technology for his education. Yes, he used computers moderately but was not connected to the Internet. He went on to a prep school where they were restricted to internet access only in the library with heavy filters.
What changed everything was the introduction of the smartphone. Now, basically, everyone is wired to the Internet through their brains. And it is not only robbing us of our right to privacy but it is changing the function of the human brain in our children in fundamentally unknown ways.
11
@Marty
I also have a 31-year-old son, as well as a 28-year-old daughter. My wife and I feel as you do, so very fortunate to have raised our kids (just barely) before it became almost impossible to shield them from damage by these quasi-beneficial technologies.
5
@Jay K + @Marty,
Good luck to your grand kids.
2
Irony is we can't live without tech and any privacy conscious tech (software or apps) can't reach us unless supported (and promoted) by Google or Facebook.
There are many people (like us) who are working hard to make tech solutions where users won't have to loose their privacy or signup with their personal email, phone number or any other identity but unfortunately most of the people won't trust these companies because they are small and are not promoted by Google or Facebook for the right reasons.
1
There already is a federal law governing student privacy. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA, 20 USC 1232g) governs collection, maintenance, and dissemination of educational records, which includes restrictions on access to personal data. It may not cover all the issues mentioned in this piece, but it's an effective tool for parents and it should have been mentioned.
3
@Nancy Lederman the laws are extremely weak. There is a law called COPPA but they don't respond to complaints, you can only file complaints so that they can "be aware of general trends" but they will not resolve your complaints. The students' locations are tracked/collected, along with photos, names and who knows what else. We have been asking the school district for over a year what data is being collected by google when students use the chrome book and who else has access to that data and we have gotten no information. Companies like YouTube are supposed to obtain parental consent for users under 18. Do you know why because they collect and market search query data- you can see it in the YouTube service terms... do you think they are obtaining consent in schools? They are not. My children have used YouTube and I have never been asked whether I consent.
6
My 5th grade son got a pop up animated ad for Grand Theft Auto at school while using school directed educational online software. The ad featured a car hacker with an assault rifle drive up and shoot at a crowd of people leaving them dead in a pool of blood. This game is rated for Mature audiences but somehow no one is legally responsible for my son seeing this content - not Google whose G-Suite platform is exclusively for education and knows that the audience is children, not the software company that had the pop up ad, not the Chrome browser and not the school district.
When I complained, the district said “in this case, the free version is supported by advertisements and is available to anyone across the globe. It is one of the millions of websites that are not covered under Colorado's state law which only prohibits targeted marketing for contracted software. In other words, if BVSD buys software it can not target market. Since this case is free it is not covered.
You had asked why Google is not responsible for the advertisements since they control the web browser. According to Google they look at the Chrome browser as a portal to the internet and do not censor anything that comes through the portal. Neither does Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Edge browsers. In essence, that means that Google (and Microsoft) are not going to take responsibility for the advertising in their browsers and apparently the current laws support that view. “
Time for new laws is now!
19
Thank you for this important and salient example.
Superintendents, school boards, state and federal law makers: are you listening?
Stop compromising our children's and families' welfare in the name of "teaching" them or "serving" them or us, their families. Free online or other computer programs are never free. And as the lunch ladies' saying (and district bills to parents) goes, There is NO free lunch.
And there much better fare for our kids and our families elsewhere. Like on paper and filing cabinets and blackboards and actual hold-your-hand books. (Gasp!)
9
@Mama
The problem is bad people do not obey laws and find ways around them. If we could find a way to only reward the good guys we would be much better off.
1
We need to protect privacy for ALL of us, not just the children. Adults deserve to have their privacy protected too. Why should we be forced, as part of applying for a job online, to sign up for email alerts we don't want or create an account we don't want? Why should stores be allowed to force us to sign up for memberships to get the sale price on items? Why should we be expected to give out our phone numbers and other personal data to activate software we buy?
There should be a strongly enforced limit to what we're expected to give in return for activating a service online, buying online, or simply looking online. Constantly targeting us for ads, showing us what our economic status suggests we want to see is manipulative. Ads are the crabgrass in the lawn of life in America whether it's online, in public spaces, etc.
9
@hen3ry
Yes. Yes. Yes. And the sign ups in stores for memberships to get the sale price are becoming more and more complicated and ridiculous. Apps that track you are pushed, although for now phone numbers are allowed. And when you question the process, the people across the counter act like you are crazy. Some just state flat out, “No one has privacy. Give it up.”
2
Now you understand the logic behind the tech gurus' restrictions on their own kids. It's not just the direct influence on the child's own development. The data can easily be mined for everything related to the parents, siblings, friends, etc. in the kid's environment.
13
School-mandated educational software shouldn't be allowed to show /any/ advertising to kids, targeted or otherwise!
10
You can be sure that nobody who is anybody in SV lets their kids within a light year of sharing their personal info. But every problem creates an opportunity - how about an AI that posts great stuff to your kids 4 skook fakebook to jack up their social credit score, which is what this is all about. BTW, I worked in tech since computers used cards.
3
Schools don’t give you any choice.
11
Teachers innocently purchase software they believe is only for their classroom - to track compliance, participation, attendance and disabilities - without knowing the data is often resold to third parties. Especially for kids over 13. Superintendents, principals, teachers and parents need to review software privacy policies before purchase. Companies often "shape-up" when confronted with losing a sale or reputation.
3
@ rbeckly
You are right except for the "innocently" part. The lead to your comment should've been the critical need for school employees, at every level, to thoroughly read and understand the data collection and privacy policies and practices. And to have the school's legal counsel vet it as well. If anything is remotely unclear or inadequately defined and described, axe the program or service unless and until the company/provider/developer provides full and clear answers that are then shared, along with full data collection and privacy policies and practices, with all parents, who also should read before signing away. To fail to take these basic steps is not "innocence" but negligence.
6
There are alternatives to Google that will protect privacy. Choosing educational tools that take this into account is more important than simply choosing the cheapest alternative.
4
I've designed software for 30+ years, and all of it required tracking "a unique entity" (human or not) over time for the software to work, but I don't see why any system needs "400 categories of information", however.
I'm not convinced computer based instruction (CBI) works in all cases. A math app works because a student can work at a problem until he/she solves it. In physics a computer can simulate experiments that a school cannot afford.
Don't bring CBI anywhere near english classes, and history is best served by letting students just read alternate history sources online. The goal should be to "teach"; not measure progress.
You can design a system where only the student's teacher can view their online work. That is as far as the individual's information should go.
14
@OSS Architect
Since you have "OSS" in your name, you might already be aware of an amazing system which does exactly what you are describing. It is also Free Open Source Software (FOSS). It is called Moodle and my wife and I have deployed this system in her high school classroom for years with great results and complete privacy. The information never leaves the classroom - air gapped from the internet.
8
Very recently, I could not sign up to volunteer to bake cupcakes for a school function without having to sign up on some online, newfangled computer platform with all of my personal info fed into it and another password to forget.
18
Yes, that has been our experience, too. The most irritating and inconsiderate is when teachers insist on using sign-up genie or similar program in order to schedule a (mandatory!)parent-teacher conference or send out homework or other important class or school announcements or important information only via the Internet. To boot, they often enter our personal information into the third party for profit online system without telling us and without our permission.
Teachers and parents and schools should remember that not all families can afford internet service or computers in their homes or even have it at their job, may have their internet activity at work monitored by their employer so not be able to take care of personal/family business via work computers, may not be able to leave work to get over to the public library during its limited hours to wait two hours to have use of the public computer for just 15 minutes. Furthermore, some students or their family members have legitimate safety concerns and needs that get violated by schools and people acting on behalf of the schools mindlessly imputing home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, complete names, ages, birthdays and sometimes the coming and goings (for example in newsletters and announcements made available to anyone on the internet, regardless of (lack of) affiliation with that specific class or school.
Educational and school-related equity, inclusion, community shouldn't require online presence.
15
They should not but they will.
We've almost completed the phase where the human teachers are still in charge and are supported by the technology industry thanks to virtual teachers.
The next phase will be used by the technology industry to learn how to replace the human teacher. This will be presented as a progress, with nobody left behind or slowed down, thanks to real time adjustments in the personalized teaching. The human teachers will progressively be in charge only of those who can't follow the slowest pace of the virtual teacher.
Once the machine learning phase will be completed, the Google artificial intelligence will decide which kids deserve to attend the Google elementary school, middle school, high school and college before joining Google.
7
"But policymakers must intervene specifically to protect the most precious and vulnerable people in our society: children. "
Care to explain why children are more "precious" than any other human being?
3
@Ed Because they are the hope of the future rather then the scourge of the present!
4
@Frank
So . . . everyone who is not a child is the scourge of the present? And nobody who is not a child can be the hope of the future?
Uh, because they carry on the human race... no children, no future for our species.
1
HIV and mental health (depression) status are both pieces of federally- and often state-protected personal health information and schools have NO business sharing the information with anyone. If the government (ie, public schools or schools getting any kind of public benefit, including non-profit status or a Charter from the public schools, and agencies contracting with them) is going to request or require personal health information, then they should legally be considered a covered health care agency/provider as defined by HIPPA laws, and should be civilly and criminally liable for breaches of that personal health information.
There is zero good reason why a company providing essentially clerical duties for a school or district, or a company providing (allegedly) educational material to children would need to know the child's HIV status, that she missed school to go to a psychotherapist, or that his father is in jail.
22
You sold your soul for a cat video
And
Now you’ll sell your children for a chromebook.
14
Amen! to that title!
3
Big Brother... 1984
3
Please no federal laws!! The state of Connecticut has already enacted legislation to protect student privacy. While these laws are well meaning, it has often hampered our ability to use innovated technology. I find it ironic that parents fret about this but then post very public pictures on social media of their children's every activities.
4
Not all of us parents are that careless or clueless.
5
@Suzanne Hurley. You have a point. Still, birthday photos aren't damaging to a child's future in the way that a personality profile gleaned through online learning is.
4
Mr Ghosh and Mr Steyer are absolutely correct in their points about the loss of privacy of the children. I wouldn't trust either Facebook (although I am avid user of Facebook) and Google (I also use Youtube and Gmail everyday) with much privacy data. Why should a company or a teaching company need to know and retain a child’s behavior to educate him or her? I am afraid such data are likely to haunt the child years later when this is put on the front page of NYT. Moreover, we have found that these companies really are oblivious to the security of the data. Though I adore Sundar Pitchai, I must admit that he was evasive on the privacy issue. Moreover, we have plenty of information how they are using our private information for their private gain. We need strong reulations protecting our privacy.
5
Jim Steyer and Common Sense Media have been a boon to schools and families for a long time. Kudos also to Bill Fitzgerald of CSM as he has led an effective effort to hold vendor's feet to the fire by leveraging the privacy concerns of hundreds of schools and teachers to protect student data. Keep up the good work CSM!
3
All laws protecting children's privacy (and that of adults) and parents' rights to assert those rights need to INCLUDE SIGNIFICANT AND MEANINGFUL REPERCUSSIONS for those individuals and entities that actively or negligently impinge on or ignore those rights and protections.
Laws without teeth do little to protect.
11
What is needed here are two things that are sorely missing: money for technology and laws.
We need the money for technology because technology is a powerful tool in a classroom.
We need the money because without it, beleaguered school systems are making deals with the devil out of necessity. Our district went from $1100/unit MacBooks to $300 Chromebooks. Guess how the Chromebooks got to be so cheap?
Now, I can hear the chorus of old fogey saying "we don't need computers in the classrooms" to which I saw, WRONG. Yes, we do.
The truth is that school is woefully behind in teaching the future workforce what it needs to learn. Kids today need to learn everything from being creative problem solvers, to communicating with different kinds of people to discerning and being able to process competing types of information. They will need to learn how to communicate via presentations, multimedia, etc. Things like what kind of font to use to how to put together a film will be skills you need to sell yourself, as an example, in a world that my require us all to be independent contractors. This is one example.
....so yeah, those are things that are best taught with a laptop.
....which means we need to fund schools so they are not having to sell out our kids data in order to get the tools they need.
7
If there are any wealthy liberal patriots out there reading this, please help preserve the future freedom of our children and build a team of technology advisers that can provide accurate information to School Boards, School Administrators, and Teachers about the horrendous threat posed by Google Classroom, and the use of any Google products in the classroom. Google is NOT under the control of local school districts and the contracts signed do not prevent Google from amassing huge and dangerous profiles of our children's thoughts and actions. Google rightly claims that it does not sell its users data. This is true but highly misleading. Google is the middle-man connecting advertisers (the real customers of Google, not the students) to targeted lists of potential customers using highly detailed profiles. Google would never sell this data, it is way too valuable to share. We should not share it with Google, it is much too much power over our economic and political futures. This is why Google has become the most prolific lobbyist in the history of the Washington swamp. Act now, it may already be too late to stop this monster.
12
Privacy is a little like climate change: our window to do anything is rapidly closing. We need a constitutional amendment protecting our data and digital privacy. It’s a Bill of Rights issue for the 21st century.
28
Yes indeed!!
6
We should be clear, tech has always valued profit over mission. And have you also noticed that elite private schools do not subject students to these digitalized personalization schemes.
8
And then there are the teachers, coaches, administrators and even class parents who use their own private email accounts for communicating with parents and students, rather than using the school district's (ostensibly!) private and secure servers and related email accounts.
I have yet to meet a teacher who has thoroughly read and understood the nuances of Google's, Yahoo's, aol's, or other email provider's privacy policies and practices. For example, a major popular web-based email provider requires users to give the company nearly permanent, unlimited license to information in emails. The obvious reason is so that they can store and retrieve your emails for you, but the fine print also references "research" and "marketing" or the very vague and broad "business purposes." And importantly, this license presumably applies both to emails sent by the account holder AND received by the account holder. So the teacher or class parent or administrator opting to use his own personal account is, essentially, requiring all other parents who send or receive email to his private account to license their information as well. Not good and inequitable. Please, educators, THINK.
12
You’d think the FIRST thing schools would’ve done is create ANONYMOUS IDENTITIES or methods for schoolchildren to sign into online educational materials...Privacy should’ve been mandatory for kids at such tender ages!
WHAT were they thinking?!
17
Correct!
For college-educate adults who supposedly have kids' growth and wellbeing at the center of their professional lives, they seem too easily enamored of whatever makes *their* adult job easier or gives them the perceived (but questionable) "bling" of tech, as if it somehow makes them better or savvier educators because they use the internet to "teach".
2
Has the author ever watched TV, opened up Youtube? You dont need data to target kids with Vaping ads, all you need is content marketing through instagram and a khardashian. Once again regulators simply do not understand modern media. The only real solution is a prohibition on advertising aimed at people below the age of 18. Good luck with that
3
My kids have been assigned and made to use online accounts, complete with usernames that include their actual, IRL, names, as early as 1st or 2nd grade, without their parents' prior knowledge or consent. In public (government) schools and with 3rd party, often for-profit corporations whose privacy policies often weren't even read by school administrators or teachers, let alone fully understood by them. Parents are given no chance to opt-out on their children's or families' behalf, and are scorned and shamed by school administrators for questioning the use of such programs, accounts, usernames, etc. And despite the APA (Pediatricians) repeatedly issuing statements and guidelines to limit children's, especially young children's screen time, schools routinely require screen time in class and encourage its use at home, farming out some of their 3-Rs teaching to tech companies -- and fail to keep track of students' in-school screentime and inform parents of same. This has implications for children's ocular health and vision, cognitive and physical development, etc.
The blind trust of anything tech by teachers and school administrators mesmerized by hype and their own uninformed use of tech is astounding. One wonders if they ever read articles like NYT's recent one on location data, FB breaches, bank and hotel breaches....
36
I have continually fought the requirement that to participate in school activities, kids need Facebook (and similar) accounts. Teachers, coaches and other students require them because they are easy to use. Reluctantly, I allowed my children to get FB accounts to which they do not post because if I didn't, they would be excluded.
Schools, given all they know, should not only not allow teachers, coaches, clubs etc to require FB accounts, they should ban them for these activities.
24
I work in tech. Users have no idea what they are consenting to and tech firms have no idea how much data they are really harvesting let alone what they really need it for in the first place. We allow ourselves to be spied on and accept it as part of the deal and then complain when there is a data breach or some other violation and continue on, oblivious to the growing hazards.
30
Computers in the classroom are neither panacea nor poison. Online platforms permit my students to work at their own pace at times, and to access information online, and to track what they're missing when absent. I am much more efficient and effective than the days of relying on the copy machine and the overhead projector. And, any teacher who talks at them all day is not effective anyway. But I also need students to mark directly on text, which they cannot do in a shiny textbook. I need them to write by hand. A mix of online work and paper work is ideal for my students.
4
@J
Longtime teacher here too. You've entirely missed the point of the article. It's not a screen versus paper argument. It's about the privacy hazards involved in the way in which IT is currently used in many schools, particularly with students of minor age.
3
As a parent of pre_K and pre-school kids, I had no idea. I"m constantly being bombarded with messages to limit screen time, not allow social media until much much older (and even then, restrict it), and to keep kids off the Internet.
And now I'm learning that once my kids enter the school system, I'm going to be forced to go against all this just so that they can complete their schoolwork?
11
I vote for digital privacy for all of us, and for kids who haven't figured themselves or the world of yet. Who will join me?
21
How about getting technology out of the classroom and going back to books and chalkboards?
85
@Peter You are sadly right, and you know whereof you speak! As long as we're going to under-fund education and load teachers up with unfair class sizes as well as follow a rigid curriculum/policy where you teach to the test (? received information. I'm out of my depth here so please correct me), I guess we're going to need technology to be sure all of your kids are reached. We have to have something.
As you say, you are forced to teach to the middle which is what I imagine is not you went into teaching for.
My friends who teach have become so disillusioned. What's the point when their creativity and personal commitment are neither utilized nor honored? When I think of how much energy and time teachers in the public school I went to expended in the care and nurturing of their students, I am amazed. I see how spoiled I was. Education is truly a noble profession.
10
@Peter
The issue is not the use of computers to augment children's learning. The issue is the collection of data about the children, particularly when companies offer product at low or no cost. There are useful products that don't do that, but they do cost more.
Over 30 years ago I did some of my own programming on a programmable calculator to help my children learn arithmetic. Then we bought some software for our Apple II. designed by Seymour Papert, the MIT computer scientist, whose motto was children should program the computer, not the computer program the children - very relevant, I think, of the point of this column.
6
@Peter Disagree- I wen to school in the 60's and had 51 classmates in 1st grade. It can be done and done well.
4
A recent Times story described the digital divide--& not what you might think.
None of the Silicon Valley CEOs let their kids use screens. Instead, the software described in this story is pushed on poor neighborhoods. In some cases, Ipads are given out in (if I remember correctly) GRADE SCHOOL. With threats that poor kids MUST learn computing skills, or they'll never get jobs.
I used to think Gates was an honorable man--but if he's pushing this software on children, he's no better than the rest of them.
37
@Rocky Mtn girl Gates is doing a lot more evil than just profiting from tech in schools. His "philanthropy" has driven the worst kind of education reform. It has been such a dismal failure that even he had to (sort of) admit it.
1
My kid’s school grumbled a little when we said no way to iPad time, but were flexible enough to let kiddo do math problems and read books while the other ones played math “games”.
Kiddo is way ahead in math, but way behind in video games.
38
@ Toni B
It's telling that senior executives of Silicon Valley tech companies tend not to let their kids have much, if any, screen time. Their kids are using pencil and paper, paper books, actual physical math manipulators, and spending time outdoors exercising their bodies and their eyes (warding off nearsightedness associated with prolonged screen time).
And let's not forget that many of the most brilliant tech creators went to school before personal desktop computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, or "smart" phones exhorted or were readily available. They seem to have done ok.
19
@Mama
Glad to see someone else raising the issue of myopia as related to excessive use of closely held screens in early childhood. This issue needs a lot more attention and is a good example of how schools have rushed down this road without doing enough due diligence.
4
I believe our District's current risk mitigation for sites, vendors, etc. is unacceptable. The District states, “we are still using some sites to which we don't have a signed contract. Hence the request for parents to give permission for these specific titles”, they are creating an illusion of vetting sites, but then to compensate for sites that don’t meet the criteria it shifts the risk to parents. Specifically, parents that receive countless numbers of forms to review and sign within a short amount of time. There is inherent pressure also to follow the crowd or not make waves so that one student isn’t isolated, which leads to parents signing these forms.
The risk-shifting to parents quickly signing off on a multitude of forms is not an appropriate vetting of vendors or solution to this problem. The vendors either meet the privacy criteria or they don’t. Personal identifiable information policies are great and all, but what about irrevocable licenses to “User Content” which includes images, video, etc.?
The degree to which we as a society are willing to give up rights to “User Content” is beyond comprehension. I just wish it hasn’t become so easily ingrained into a school district curriculum. “User Content” seems innocuous until one realizes their child is posting photos or videos associated with a multi-day class trip to an ‘educational’ website or app that lays claim to irrevocable ‘user content’ licenses.
9
So right on target!
A Fair and Free Public Education should NOT require (or encourage) the relinquishing of privacy, online and real world safety, or parents' rights to direct and to protect their children. Public schools and, by extension, the private institutions and companies with which they contract, are a part of the government. When will people, including the teachers and other school personnel and district employees -- and courts! -- recognize that fact and consider the implications, short- and long-term, of their rarely and barely thought-out collection, storage, and sharing of children's and families' personal and often highly-sensitive information? And it's not much of a choice to, in effect, tell kids or parents that they can just not participate when no other, at least equally effective options are offered and provided or if the child and/or family will be ostracized for opting out.
7
As a student going through all this now, it seems like the kids are more resigned than the adults towards this. We know our data is bought, sold, and disseminated. And quite generally we don’t care. This is the way things are now and I’m afraid there’s no going back. The plodding path of legislation made by old people has very little power against the huge corporate interests in this exploding data driven world. All young people are the victims of a world created by their elders, but also the creators of the next. This is no different.
11
@Emily
The power to say "No" is very great, and I suggest you exercise it to whatever extent you can.
25
@Emily As an old person and senior IT technical person, let me tell you that resignation is not the way to go. People exist for more than to be monetized by the 1% and huge corporate interests.
Resist. Use aliases and phony information online. Don't tag or allow others to tag photos. Hide locations. Don't give out your real cellphone number--it's tracked more than Social Security numbers. Use FB or other social media on one device only, one separate from your real email and other accounts.
42
Yep, at least for me, the fake names and fake birthdates and fake everything are standard practice. Turning off all tracking features, etc. We can control our aliases all we like, just not the machinations on the other end.
9
Terrifying also is that, sooner or later, depending how intelligent our policy makers are, this will be stopped. Teaching methods have evolved over hundreds of years. Children learn well in classrooms facing the teacher. Peer pressure keeps them focussed on one thing.
Now distraction, toys, gaming, loss of a sense of direction, of memory, of fine coordination skills, friendship, the ability to read faces reducing empathy and leading to isolation, depression and despair, online bullying, and the all pervasive fleecing of dollars by big tec big brother.
I dont buy that this is inevitable, and just like big sugar, or the tobacco industry we are mere slaves of the latest products to be rammed down our throats.
I believe that sooner or later we will stop this. And then there will be the lost generation. Sandwiched between those of us whose brains were not scrambled.
14
"Their behavioral data is continuously suctioned up by technology firms through tablets, smartphones and computers and is at risk of being misused."
Wrong. Tracking and recording people's behavior IS an abuse of power.
The best and the unique thing about this country has always been the freedom we had to do anything, to start over, to escape our upbringing, to reinvent ourselves. Freedom and the ability to take the world on equal terms with everyone else is arguably the point of America. Unfortunately, predictability is more profitable than freedom. The more your history is used to define the opportunities you supposedly want, the more you are constrained. Dealing with people about whom you know nothing, but who know everything about you, is not a fair game. There is simply no legitimate reason for any company to amass so much data on so many people. It not only enables manipulation for profit, it enables manipulation for political power, as we are learning. It's a power that goes beyond the wildest dreams of government dictatorships. Technology does not have to be designed to exploit us. It can be designed to empower us.
29
@Martin Yes, there is a legitimate reason for a company to amass so much data on so many people. It has made the lives of millions of people significantly better. It has made firms more profitable, employed more people, made shopping easier. You cannot expect to receive free services from dozens of tech companies, and pay nothing. This is an unreasonable position. You have consented to this data collection when you signed up for these services, or used them for free. Your data is not yours to distribute and protect as you please. The trade of data between institutions drives the modern economy, and it would be foolish to impede upon this.
1
@JH So data is valuable -- and should not be free? I will send my Google et al. my bill each time I learn where else my name and image has surfaced.
8
@JH Delusional.
Data collection has not made the lives of millions of people significantly better. They're making $ even when we pay nothing.
People do not understand how much is known about them, how it is used and how its misuse will expand.
I've worked with data in IT since the 90s. It's only getting worse. We're already living in a surveillance state, our lack of privacy will imprison us.
17
Very scary and as usual, private industry is far ahead of the got and it will only be later when our kids or we have suffered that maybe this will be considered something to address. I hate that my daughter has to use Google for her work- the upside of collaboration is usually wiped out by what I find permission for all students to contact each other, to see how the others are working and what they are doing on their project or to be accessible by any teachers at the school directly, without a parent knowing. Technology has fantastic upsides but in recent years we see it comes with a price and has to be closely monitored because the corporations won't monitor themselves. Someone in the comments said 'information has become a commodity to be bought and sold'. We the people (and our little ones) are being treated as constant consumers- to be targeted, sold to, duped, exploited and more.
4
Like so much of technology, information has become a commodity to be bought and sold. The profit-driven model has no soul, cares nothing about its detrimental affects on society or individuals, and doesn't serve the public interest if it interferes with its bottom line. The same is true in other profit-driven industries that have taken over what should be the domain of the public sector: health care, prisons, and now schools.
The profit motive has moved us from a society of citizenship to a society of consumerism. People have no intrinsic value in this consumer society beyond what money can be made off of us.
Similar to the cigarette industry, the tactics are meant to hook us without disclosing the dangers inherent in the product.
11
Looking for digital privacy, on students' behalf? Lofty goal. But, whos is going to bell the cat (said better in Spanish: "Quien le puede poner el cascabel al gato")? Remember the 'upper hand' Coca Cola (among others) has (had?) on soda drinks in schools? Once condoned, difficult to get rid of.
1
Has anyone asked the schools how the children's data is stored and where, and for how long, and what exactly they're doing with it? Are they selling it or trading it for software or hardware or other services? Collecting data from primary school children and onward through their years at high school and beyond is something the Stasi would have loved to have: a documented population, ready to be manipulated and controlled.
Yes, I'm alarmist, but data matching/mining and tracking people is far too easily done. I can see how devices handed out by well meaning school boards could be tweaked to collect data, monitor responses, or adjust the teaching software to produce a desired result. Where are those people who yell about black helicopters when I need one?
15
@Heather Inglis
Lovers of collecting kids' data are pushing for data interoperability to make it easier to mine and commercialize for their own use and profit.
My own school district has no ability to monitor what companies are doing with kids' data and as far as I can tell, no school with official authority cares. Of course they don't want to make their own information public.
5
@Heather Inglis
Yes, but I don't yell about black helicopters. I could have written this article. I've been arguing with the district technology office and superintendent's office on this topic. I reached out to one of Harvard's "knowledge center" on this topic a few years ago. Collecting data stinks, but granting irrevocable licenses to digital content (like photos) is a whole other level. The school board technology office vets tech providers, but their solution if the tech school board doesn't agree to terms? Get parental consent. What a cop-out. Hardly meaningful consent particularly with signature turnaround times. I have tried to get state and federal officials in Massachusetts to pass legislation.
As I noted to the Superintendent and the Technology Department for the school district when their "solution" is to put the responsibility for terms of service review to the parents..."I will quote Code.org for my own use: We (My household members) don’t really have a team to be supporting evaluating if pledges are different on a district-by-district (vendor by vendor) or state-by-state (class by class) basis. On top of evaluating, our team (my household) is small and staying on top of changing requests would add a large amount of work to us."
These providers either meet the standards set by the district or they don't. No "parental consent" (which is hardly done with an informed and timely review) should replace a strict standard which tech providers must pass.
14
@Heather Inglis
Good point.
Why do they need to collect data about their family? Or anything not related to scores?
4
Talk about "This is going on your permanent record"!
They really mean permanent this time.
11
All these media companies are like the old knock at the door. Then, it was always someone who wanted something from you; either to sell you something, or convert to you. But then, you could just say "No, thanks. Not interested." These days you have no option to say that, and no way to fully know who is trawling your data or for what purpose it might be used one day. Even if you've never connected yourself to social media, they still have data on you. Even if you've never been on the internet, someone knows you - a friend, a business, a hospital - and your information is now out there just waiting to be stolen, trawled, and used against you.
Some serious laws are needed, and quickly. We should have the right to know exactly where our data is, and it should be our choice alone how it will be used. Unless, of course, those elite politicians in their ivory towers think we are just peasants in a trough to be bled completely dry of intellectual property as well as money.
13
This isn't medicine where privacy is essential. I'm curious as how students are sacrificing privacy specifically in the area of education?
As I read this article I remember how all my educational info, test scores, projects and their grades, were shared with everyone. Students should have more privacy now with technology. What I see in education software is that teachers can monitor an individual student's learning more precisely. And now they can focus their efforts on helping the individual where they really need it.
Privacy laws still apply. PII information is still illegal to share. And there are laws specific to minors to prevent advertising and tracking.
5
This is a far reaching problem, especially when the collection is wrapped into services with supposed benefits for students and districts. Of course, the collection and selling of data is never noted. For years we have been resistant to participating but the Public School districts make it very difficult.
Heartland produces an app called MySchoolBucks which is used by many US districts. People are 'blissfully' unaware that this is a data collection engine and that info is collected about every activity. This data is not restricted from sharing.
The terms even say the site does not have any child privacy issues as it is meant to be used by adults. Yet you must add student info for student specific school expenses. Student specific info is collected about every activity and advanced academic class expense.
Child privacy laws should be expanded to improve awareness. Each group that collects data should be required to provide the collected data back to the parents/guardians to educate them on all that is collected and shared about their families.
2
Interesting article. The wife of Facebook stealer of privacy now has education programs so that they an track everything children do. As parents we need to take charge of this insane technology and inform our children what the consequences are. We should not be giving anything to the Facebook, social media platforms. enough already.
go to the library get books and if the teacher wants to use technology know what in the world it is doing and where the results are going. Be involved in the PTA time for parents to take control.
Technology has shown that it is not a supporter of democracy.
5
Districts and colleges have sold out to Google and other tech and testing companies long ago. Those gmail accounts (branded as a school) and Chromebooks and Pearson testing, etc have been scraping data from our kids for years. We don’t have a choice and too many are blind to what these “free” resources are getting in return. These are companies answering to shareholders for increased profits. However it is is selling ourselves because we are too enamored by the bargain to complain. There is no such thing as digital privacy anymore. Between the algorithms and hacking, we may be a number, but a lot is know about all of us. Teach our children how we’ve been yoked, by choice or not, and maybe they can change the world.
6
A child's right to a public education shouldn't be dependent on providing access to personal information. Further, thanks to the NYT, we now know companies can identify people without actually storing their names.
The model needs to change from opt out to families only having to share info with educational and other apps if they opt in. There is no other way to protect privacy.
Digital Promise, the Data Quality Campaign, Project Unicorn, its funders, supporters and founders, the Gates Foundation and other like them are not our children's friends. Any push for data interoperability will benefit them, not my children.
Congress needs to stop the cradle to the grave collection and storage of children's information; otherwise, we will all become serfs to those in power.
41
Not that I disagree with the overall sentiment that laws could be enforced more uniformly and that data collection imperative and gamic design have potentially negative effects on children, but it seems a little disingenuous to not mention the protections of FERPA or COPPA which have been expanded in recent guidance to address a lot of these concerns. This is the type of anxiety fear-mongering that leads to reactive policy-making and shortsighted laws.
2
@Elias Wright. Now there's some rose-colored glasses!
1
@Elias Wright
Don't marginalize legitimate and factual privacy concerns by characterizing people as "fear-mongering."
FERPA was weakened--see https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/ferpa-changes/.
Nor is there much real or great enforcement of FERPA or COPPA. See https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/auditreports/fy2019/a09r0008.pdf
"The Privacy Office did not have controls to ensure that it timely and effectively processed FERPA complaints during our audit period. The Privacy Office had a longstanding and substantial backlog of unresolved FERPA complaints that prevented timely and effective resolution of new complaints it received. It also had a number of significant control weaknesses that hampered its ability to resolve FERPA complaints..."
2
i continue to be shocked by the breadth of the tech industry's reach into private information collection, sharing, and marketing. i shouldn't be.
17
I almost agree with everything you state, except for this: "We don’t want children to fear that anything they say or do online could be used against them someday." Wrong! Children absolutely need to be taught that they should be careful of what they say and do on the internet. Stuff stays in cyberspace for a long time - kids need to know this. I wish there were clear and concrete consequences for cyberbullying, just to name an example, and that more children were fearful that their involvement in posting inappropriate, inaccurate or threatening statements could have serious repercussions for them that could last for a long time. I am all for protecting children from exploitation by advertisers and data miners, but let's educate them about these things as well.
49
@katsmith There's got to be a middle ground though, don't you think? People shouldn't be afraid that literally anything they've ever posted can be weaponized against them some day, but at the same time they shouldn't think that they have complete impunity to post whatever they want without any consequences whatsoever. I feel like neither extreme is a good thing, and we've got to find someplace in the middle.
2
@katsmith I agree. We teach our children to cross the street safely. On-line safety should also be taught.
25
@Sam Rosenberg
But what if it is the case that the most seemingly innocent remarks can indeed be used against you? Especially when their reach is global, and their storage permanent?
First, it's my experience that anyone's words can be twisted, and that who ends up suffering is remarkably arbitrary.
Second, there was a time when we collectively agreed that minors should not be subjected to continual scrutiny, that a child needs privacy to grow up. What happened to that consensus?
It sounds to me like The Permanent Record the schoolmarms warned us about has come back with a vengence.
9
As a public school teacher in Los Angeles, this column resonates very strongly with me. In the last few years, my district has bombarded its students and teachers with everything from surveys to online testing to mandatory online programs that are required to be used. While this is going on, students are no longer required to learn cursive writing. Try to find a middle school music program.
Accompanying this non-stop bombardment of technology is the sad fact that an entire generation of school children is growing up with virtually no concept of personal privacy. They don't know what it is or why it is valuable.
And adults aren't much better. I am literally the only teacher I know who does not participate in any form of social media. I still use a flip-phone.
Oh, by the way, one of our mandated online programs, "Amplify" (Used in Science), is made by a company owned, I understand, by Rupert Murdoch. Can it get any worse? I'm sure it can.
88
@Vesuviano Does your superintendent (past or present) consult for ERDI? Mine does and my school district has ended up purchasing a lot of products from ERDI clients.
Amplify has now been sold to Emerson Collective, in which Steve Jobs widow is involved. My child's school has it and he reported that the teacher asked the kids about it, discovered a lot don't like it and she is using more outside materials.
There should be a federal law that school government officials who work in schools that receive federal funds along with their family members are required to file detailed financial disclosures to help determine whether there are conflicts of interests.
21
@Charlie
Don't know if our new supe, Austin Beutner, consults for ERDI, but do know that Ramon Cortines, a former LAUSD supe, had a sweetheart deal with Scholastic until it was found out. Scholastic is one of our District's biggest vendors.
I'm in complete agreement with your last paragraph. I also want the Arts put back into public schools.
8
@Vesuviano
I remind you, as I do everyone, that social media is the tip of the iceberg on data collection. Do you use Google? Amazon?
This digital age is here to stay, but we all have to be smarter about controlling what they do with our data. And kids? Utterly reprehensible. Kids cannot even consent. Further, under no circumstances should the 'targeted marketing' we adults are bombarded with constantly be directed at children. Am I to understand that if a child is given an iPad or Chromebook for classwork they are seeing ads on those devices? Seriously?
And, yes, where the heck are the arts and all the other non-tech studies? The only courses deemed fit for the classroom these days are those related to STEM.
All that said, there are areas where data collection, if done anonymously, could be helpful. I don't know why people would not want to know why kids are absent from school or how many kids have different living relationships at home. It could be helpful in creating services to help people. Yes, I know, greed dictates our economy now and the people collecting the data are likely doing it to profit from it, but I would really like to see data that would explain to me why our American kids do so poorly in international PISA test scores. All this tech, and we still stink.
This issue is a tough one because, as I said, tech isn't going away. I finally got rid of my flip phone a few months ago and couldn't be happier.
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Our children attended a private day school that set up a lunch program which was finger print driven. That was in 2010. We refused to participate and gave our children cash.
It is awful that our children are forced to set up google accounts and other tech counts that collect a lot of data on them. We are looking for a way out of that issue. Thank you for drawing attention to the problem.
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@Jwalnut
Totally agree. I've been a teacher for two decades and take good care not to let my child be misled into any such surrendering of privacy, very much including biometrics. Having worked inside schools, I know all too well how careless is the decision-making around such issues, and how rarely the long-term welfare of the children is factored into the equation in any knowledgeable way. Ignorance of the uses of technology is all too often behind the phony veneer of "tech-friendly" schools. They can name the gadgets, programs and apps they're using, and maybe the immediate effects in the classroom, but they rarely can tell you much about the long-term effects of using those tools. Just because school administrators get ahead by being sheeple following the latest half-baked bureaucratic trend, that doesn't mean we should let them impart the same to our kids.
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