Countries – like China and the UK – are rapidly moving to deploy facial recognition technology in their primary and secondary schools. In the U.S., we would do well to follow a different path. The ACLU is at the forefront of the charge to ensure that doesn’t happen, and they deserve our support for it.
Scholastic, one of the most beloved of all education brands, fails to provide even rudimentary security protections for some of its publicly available digital products directed to children under 13.
If you care about your digital privacy and security, here is the tech gear to bring with you to ISTE 2018.
The adults have to take responsibility, too.
Largely unexamined in the large-scale shift to digital learning in education are the accompanying ethical considerations. Indeed, the issues and tradeoffs that school leaders and teachers face in using technology in schools and for education — whether free or for a fee — are more complex than they have ever been.
Like financial institutions, retailers, and Fortune 500 companies around the world, school districts are increasingly finding themselves and the personal information they hold about students, faculty, and staff targets of costly cyberincidents, including phishing schemes, malware intrusions, and denial of service (DoS) and ransomware attacks.
While increased access to technology has been instrumental to the growth of the OER movement, educational technology choices (often made by schools – and their vendors – on behalf of students) can serve to amplify and/or mute key features of openness. Indeed, the often unspoken relationship between OER and educational technology can be fraught with misplaced assumptions, red flags, value conflicts, and licensing complications.
I’m pleased to announce the beta launch of the K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center at: https://www.k12cybersecure.com. The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center website will be the new home of the K-12 Cyber Incident Map and related cybersecurity resources and commentary.
Often with their parents’ encouragement and supervision, young children are increasingly relying on mobile apps—even services that may not have expressly been designed for them—for learning. While parents have an expectation of privacy for their children when they use these apps, a new study suggests that parents’ trust may be misplaced.
Of note, some of the brands engaged in tracking may be quite familiar to readers…
Q: According to NAEP 2017, does home access to a computer (or tablet) and the internet make a difference on the math performance of 4th and 8th grade students?
A: Maybe not.
