Nate Cardozo and Jamie Lee Williams write: School districts across the country are grappling with how to deal with their students’ use of technology and social media. All too often, in an attempt to protect students, they end up implementing technology polices that give administrators too much power and go too far in restricting what…
Category: Youth & Schools
Student app in Ottawa classes gets raves from teachers, but worries privacy experts
Vito Pilieci reports: Experts are expressing concern over a new computer application that collects and stores information about the in-class behaviour of students, some as young as six years old, as the app rolls out in schools around the world, including here in Ottawa. Called ClassDojo, the application allows teachers to assign points to students for positive behaviour, and to…
Las Vegas Gambles with Student Privacy
An item from Capitol Resource Institute caught my eye: Las Vegas has long boasted of its commitment to confidentiality with its trademark phrase “What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.” Now its Clark County public schools appear poised to stretch the definition of confidentiality to encompass whether a student is a boy or…
Big Data Research Effort Faces Student-Privacy Questions
Benjamin Herold reports: A coalition of prominent research universities is receiving federal support to redesign and scale up a massive repository for storing, sharing, and analyzing learning and behavioral data that students generate when using digital instructional tools, demonstrating the continued faith that many personalized-learning proponents have in the power of “big data” to transform…