Education for the future

Rafranz Davis, an education blogger and SMART Exemplary Educator (SEE), was invited to speak at the Future Ready conference at the White House.  Future Ready is a "detailed plan to get all schools connected with high speed internet access and devices for student learning."  According to them, connected learning gives students previously unimaginable learning experiences.

http://edcompassblog.smarttech.com/archives/18845?
 
Marketplace.org hints at an alternative view about what connected learning is really about: the sale of private student information. Personalised learning is first used to justify the collection of information on students which includes information about social and emotional learning, attitudes, values and behaviours, as well as test scores. Since education systems are being engineered to comply to a one world standard, this is the future for everybody.

In the classroom, teachers gather data on routine things like attendance, tardiness, test scores and grades. The kinds of records that used to be kept on paper.  In most states, the data are fed into a giant database, known as a statewide longitudinal data system." Different states collect different elements of personal student data.

In the last decade, the federal government has handed states more than $600 million to help them create these databases.

"One of the biggest players in the field is Knewton. It analyzes student data that it collects by keeping track of nearly every click and keystroke a child makes during digital lessons. Knewton claims to gather millions of data points on millions of children each day. Ferreira calls education `the world’s most data-mineable industry by far.`"

The promise is that all that data can be used to tailor lessons to individual kids, to their strengths and weaknesses. "They will become better learners, and that will lead to higher grades and better graduation rates."

Ferreira imagines a day when "you tell us what you had for breakfast every morning at the beginning of the semester, by the end of the semester, we should be able to tell you what you had for breakfast. Because you always did better on the days you had scrambled eggs."

A study released last year by Fordham Law professor Joel Reidenberg found that very few school districts explicitly restrict the sale or marketing of student information in contracts with service providers.

The larger concern, he says, is that connecting all those dots can create a profile of a student that can follow him from kindergarten through college. Maybe even into the workforce.

It’s the prospect of that permanent data trail, say privacy advocates, that makes it so important that schools, teachers and parents wrestle with student data issues now.

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/education/learningcurve/day-life-data-mined-kid


See also http://www.studentprivacymatters.org/?cat=1