I have worked in Technology for nearly two decades. A primary focus of my career is cyber-security, data-privacy, and training people and companies in the best practices of cyber security.
The use of technology in education has the potential to drastically increase the quality, equity, and quality of education, but only if done properly. Technology skills are absolutely necessary for students long term future. A comprehensive, relevant, and secure, curriculum for technology needs to be adopted. This curriculum must take data security, and data privacy, into account.The challenges of using technology properly, and ensuring data security and student privacy, are substantial, and it cannot be left to private companies alone to determine the best ways of using technology, and ensure data security.
In many cases, students in large school districts have an inconsistent experience. Schools in traditionally affluent neighborhoods are able to have access to technology and devices as a supplement to the teaching done by teachers. This is where the rich potential of technology in education shines. When it is used as a tool, alongside an educator, to enhance the educational experience.
Sadly, students in traditionally less affluent neighborhoods are not privy to the save benefits of their peers in affluent neighborhoods. Private companies, such as Facebook, News Corp, Google, and others, have created learning platforms that are designed to do two things. First, they supplant teachers as educators, and are used as the primary means of instruction for students, without the benefit of personal instruction. Second, they are used by private companies to gather data on students. Both goals are worrisome, however the ability for technology companies to mine student data, with or without explicit consent, is turning students into one thing, a revenue source.
Summit Learning, In-Bloom, and other platforms are openly selling data to partners in order to better assist them in developing products for schools. This is profiteering off student PI, without any regard to future ramifications. Facebook has recently admitted that their partners have had unfettered access to IMs, and personal data on it’s online platforms.
Both Facebook and Google have one primary revenue stream, advertisements based on your personal information. Facebook has been under fire for most of 2018 regarding their lack of transparency on how their users personal data is used, and shared. How can we trust tech companies to self police, when their major financial revenue would be impacted?
Well respected researchers, such as Joel Spring, have published numerous books and articles, regarding the inequity facing students, and how private companies have monetized student data for financial gain.
In addition to the data privacy concerns, we are turning our students into a revenue stream, and forcing school districts to spend a significant amount of their ever shrinking budgets on custom tailored software, that has no known benefit to the educational quality that students receive.
Research shows that smaller class sizes, with personal instructions, coupled with a healthy inclusion of fine arts curriculum, increase student results. This research has been verified and substantiated for decades, but we continue down a path of privatization, a system that ignores decades of research while pursuing only profit.
Yes, technology can be hugely beneficial to students, but we must teach students how to use technology, how to be aware of cyber security practices, and data privacy, and we must use technology as a tool alongside educators that are empowered to teach based on information learned through decades of research. We must make sure regulations are pushed that ensure data privacy, data security, and guidelines on use, based on what is best for our children, and not what is best for privatization special interest groups.
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