Personalized Learning Pits Data Innovators Against Privacy Advocates

Benjamin Herold reports:

How long should vendors be allowed to maintain and use the information they collect about school children?

The question cuts to the heart of the tensions that define the digital learning revolution now underway, said Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at England’s Oxford University.

“Big” educational data, new technologies, and learner profiles have the potential to help personalize learning in previously unimaginable ways, Mr. Mayer-Schönberger wrote in his 2014 e-book Learning With Big Data: The Future of Education. Still, he wrote that they also threaten to “shackle us to our past, denying us due credit for our ability to evolve, grow, and change.”

Not surprisingly, privacy advocates and ed-tech industry leaders see the issue very differently.

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