Asleep at the Switch: Schoolhouse Commercialism, Student Privacy, and the Failure of Policymaking (original) (raw)
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The arrival of new technologies in schools and classrooms around the nation has been met with a mixture of enthusiasm and anxiety. Education technologies ("ed tech") present tremendous opportunities: they allow schools to tailor programs to individual students; make education more collaborative and engaging through social media, gamification, and interactive content; and facilitate access to education for anyone with an Internet connection in remote parts of the world. At the same time, the combination of enhanced data collection with highly sensitive information about children and teens presents grave privacy risks. Indeed, in a recent report, the White House identified privacy in education as a flashpoint for big data policy concerns. This Article is the most comprehensive study to date of the policy issues and privacy concerns arising from the surge of ed tech innovation. It surveys the burgeoning market of ed tech solutions, which range from free Android and iPhone apps to comprehensive learning management systems and digitized curricula delivered via the Internet. It discusses the deployment of big data analytics by education institutions to enhance student performance, evaluate teachers, improve education techniques, customize programs, and better leverage scarce resources to optimize education results. This Article seeks to untangle ed tech privacy concerns from the broader policy debates surrounding standardization, the Common Core, longitudinal data systems, and the role of business in education. It unpacks the meaning of commercial data uses in schools, distinguishing between behavioral advertising to children and providing comprehensive, optimized education solutions to students, * Jules Polonetsky is Co-chair and Executive Director of the Future of Privacy Forum.
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While people claim that they want to control access to their personal information, the ease and convenience of online applications put their personal data at risk with a keystroke. The sale of personal information and subsequent behavioral tracking happens in invisible ways not fully understood by most end users. Younger online participants, such as students, who are accustomed to sharing information online, may not be aware of digital footprints or digital permanence. Similarly, student users may be unaware of risks to participating online at school or how to manage these risks. Selected countries and international organizations have offered policy solutions that, when analyzed expose policy gaps and vulnerabilities. The authors unpack the issue of digital privacy for schools with a three level approach to the research. First, they report on what is known about the identified risks to students of vulnerable ages who access online programs in schools and reported levels of awareness...
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Briefs published by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) are blind peer-reviewed by members of the Editorial Review Board. Visit http://nepc.colorado.edu to find all of these briefs. For information on the editorial board and its members, visit: http://nepc.colorado.edu/editorialboard.
Branding, privacy, and identity: growing up in surveillance capitalism
Journal of Children and Media, 2020
where she teaches and conducts research related to youth and media. She is past president of ICA and former chair of the Children, Adolescents, and Media Division. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. AJ: In this conversation we're going to explore what it means to exist in a culture where everyone is expected to be their own brand. And we want to think about what this imperative means for our sense of self, our connection to others, and our participation in a structure that monetizes our private behavior. It's been nearly 20 years since you first published No Logo. So much has changed in the media and the consumer landscape, yet your book is still being used in classes and talked about around the world because it's important and it's timely. Part of the conversation we want to have this evening is about surveillance and this notion of how companies are seeing and capturing our private behavior, bundling it, and selling it: using it as a kind of commodity. And I want to talk about surveillance more broadly before we drill down a little bit. Because I'm a youth and media scholar, I'm going to tell a story about a young person and media. Although it's anecdotal, it rose to become a court case [Robbins v. Lower Merion School District, 2010]. So, about nine or ten years ago, my daughter, who had just begun high school, was given a laptop computer. And it was in the days where everyone thought every child should have a laptop. And with that laptop came a note asking parents to fill out a form and to pay forty dollars for insurance and the child would be allowed to then take the laptop wherever he or she wants. So I filled it out, and paid the insurance, and didn't really think too much of it. And about four months later, it became clear that there was a problem. A fifteen-year-old boy was called into the vice principal's
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CHI, 2019
Elementary school educators increasingly use digital technologies to teach students, manage classrooms, and complete everyday tasks. Prior work has considered the educational and pedagogical implications of technology use, but little research has examined how educators consider privacy and security in relation to classroom technology use. To better understand what privacy and security mean to elementary school educators, we conducted nine focus groups with 25 educators across three metropolitan regions in the northeast U.S. Our findings suggest that technology use is an integral part of elementary school classrooms, that educators consider digital privacy and security through the lens of cur-ricular and classroom management goals, and that lessons to teach children about digital privacy and security are rare. Using Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, we identify design opportunities to help educators integrate privacy and security into decisions about digital technology use and to help children learn about digital privacy and security. CCS CONCEPTS • Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy; • Social and professional topics → Children.
Effectively Embedded: The Thirteenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends: 2009-2010
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In the context of the last two years' recession, parents, teachers and administrators seem to increasingly welcome school-business-partnerships‖ that they hope may help ward off program cuts. Businesses encourage such arrangements because school-based marketing and advertising programs are perfectly poised to-brand‖ children at an early age: the school environment is relatively uncluttered, children are a captive and credulous audience, and marketing and advertising programs are normalized and lent legitimacy when they are embedded into the school context. Embedded advertising, in the forms of product placement and consumer events, is not new, but it has become the dominant advertising medium in 2010 and continues to expand. When advertising is embedded in a film, music video, or school activity, it is entwined with content that children seek out and engage with for extended periods of time. In schools, embedded advertising appears in such activities as corporate-sponsored contests, programs, lesson plans, and fundraising efforts. Students are generally unable to avoid these activities; moreover, they tend to assume that what their teachers and schools present to them is in their best interest. Adolescents, traditionally considered the least vulnerable of children, may in fact be more vulnerable than their younger counterparts because their developmental stage makes them more susceptible to embedded advertising that targets their identity formation and reduced impulse control. Most significantly, embedded advertising works-so much so that corporations are willing to spend billions of dollars on it annually. Often when stakeholders consider the pros and cons of bringing commercial programs into schools, they rationalize that children are already exposed to so much marketing and advertising in their out-of-school lives that a little more won't hurt them-particularly if it brings needed money into the schools. This report examines the psychology of embedded advertising to show how it does, in fact, both influence children's brand attitudes and harm them psychologically in a variety of ways. Advertising makes children want more, eat more, and think that their self-worth can and should come from commercial products. It heightens their insecurities, distorts their gender socialization, and displaces the development
Click: The Twelfth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends, 2008-2009
Commercialism in …, 2009
As part of their efforts to create a total advertising environment, companies continue to aggressively market in school to children and youth. Advertisers now routinely blur the boundaries between editorial content and advertising in an effort to thoroughly infuse childhood with marketing ...