The NEA covers personalized learning in its membership magazine. BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow covers student privacy in parent agreements for school-issued laptops. Richard Colvin takes on the New York Times’ Google in K-12 coverage. Fire, meet gasoline.
In which I implore us to move beyond claims of “hit jobs” and “fear mongering” to fact based discussions of whether and where new guardrails may be needed to avoid conflicts of interest and the undermining of the democratic underpinnings of public schools brought about by the dramatic, technology-enabled changes remaking U.S. schools.
What privacy rights should K-12 students be entitled to when using school-owned/-leased devices, if any? What privacy rights should they have when that use happens at home? Are students entitled to different privacy rights when using the devices for personal reasons (in the cases where such use is allowed or encouraged)? Do students’ family members who […]
You are not attentive.
The choice by education leaders to obfuscate and excuse the trading away of our children’s communications and information (about their social lives, emotions, and behaviors) in exchange for discounted school technology is neither a good deal for schools nor the only way that schools can afford technology.
If you read one story this week about the state of technology in U.S. K-12 schools, let the New York Times piece by Natasha Singer be the one. I am pleased to have been able to share my perspective in the article and very interested to see the rest of this series.
We have a choice to make about the future of instructional materials in a digital age. As physical books are replaced by digital replicas and – increasingly – by interactive software, do we continue to believe that public school instructional materials should be subject to public inspection?
The Obama administration championed Future Ready, #GoOpen, and ConnectED (among other edtech-related campaigns). Who will set the agenda for edtech leadership for the foreseeable future? With more cuts in the federal education budget potentially looming in the fall, and the Trump administration clearly signaling its general preference for market-based solutions, it could be that private-sector technology companies will seize the opportunity to step into the vacuum.
Absent an ethical framework to guide our decisions, I am increasingly of the mind that the answers to the important questions about educational technology are ‘turtles all the way down.’ I’m hardly the first to observe it, but perhaps there is some significance to how I have come to the recognition. What do I mean? […]
Back from a vacation to the northwestern coast, this week saw a number of enhancements and additions to this site, including the publication of an updated OER FAQ and infographic, the addition of video news clips to the K-12 Cyber Incident Map, and a post pondering the harsh penalties being enacted against students who hack their own schools. As always, I also offer links to news, tools, and reports about education, public policy, technology, and innovation that caught my eye – including a little bit about why.
