Issue 108: Educational Technology

I've been in or near higher education for my entire career, so it is probably no surprise that educational technology ranks high on DLTJ topics. Although a lot of my experience is with library technology, that isn't the only part of the ed-tech landscape that I'm interested in. Take, for example, these recent Thursday Threads topics:

• In issue 105, how face-scanning technology in exam proctoring software couldn't spot faces.
• In issues 97 and 93, universities cope with the newly-release ChatGPT is affecting classroom assigments and a high school English teacher wonders what ChatGPT means for essays.
• In issue 79, a look at EDUCAUSE's 2022 Top 10 Information Technology issues.

...and further back, before I started numbering Thursday Threads issues:

• In 2015, the importance of data management plans for research.
• In 2014, the implications of Kuali turning itself into a commercial entity.
• In 2010, the course management system company Blackboard selling online courses.

This week, I'm pulling that thread into the recent era with seven stories. Plus a thing I learned this week, and this week's cat supervises a printer!

• Once used to lock up mobile devices at concerts, lockable phone bags have come to schools, and kids are outsmarting "phone prison" pouches.
• UNESCO studied the influence of technology on children and calls for schools to ban smartphones.
• Putting all of our student information into one cloud provider? That makes for a juicy cybercrime target. How did the community react?
• Google declared end-of-life for Chromebooks that schools want to keep using. It ended up extending the life of this equipment.
• Advise for buying educational technology.
• Chromebooks are being pulled from Denmark classrooms over student privacy concerns.
• When in doubt, the easy answer is to filter everything objectionable on the internet. It isn't a good answer.
• This Week I Learned: It is much harder to get to the Sun than it is to Mars
• This week's cat

Feel free to send this newsletter to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you are not already subscribed to DLTJ's Thursday Threads, visit the sign-up page. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, follow me on Mastodon where I post the bookmarks I save. Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Outsmarting "phone prison" pouches

Lauren is one of more than 2 million students in 50 states and 35 countries who scramble each school day to check that one final text or TikTok before sliding their phone into a gray neoprene pouch made by Los Angeles–based Yondr, which brought in over $5 million from government contracts — mainly school districts — in the first three quarters of 2024 alone, according to data service GovSpend. At many schools that use Yondr, each student receives a pouch at the beginning of the school year like they would a textbook. Before entering the building, they snap their pouches shut, then open them on their way out using plate-size magnetic unlocking bases mounted on the walls or rolled out on carts near the exits.

My family went to see Jon Stewart in person for a comedy set last year, and it was the first time I had encountered a Yondr pouch. It uses a magnetic clasp to seal the phone in the pouch, and although the pouch doesn't block signals, it makes it impossible to see use the camera. Or, as I imagine the school use cases, read/send texts and browse the social media. I can see why this would be compelling to schools to eliminate distractions, but a classroom seems much easier to control than a theater venue. And this article points out that the pouches are expensive, too, and that students have ways around them. (Like tossing a "burner" phone in the pouch and keeping your real one.)

UNESCO calls for schools to ban smartphones

Smartphones should be banned from schools to tackle classroom disruption, improve learning and help protect children from cyberbullying, a UN report has recommended. Unesco, the UN’s education, science and culture agency, said there was evidence that excessive mobile phone use was linked to reduced educational performance and that high levels of screen time had a negative effect on children’s emotional stability.

UNESCO has called for a global ban on smartphones in schools, citing concerns over classroom disruption, cyberbullying, and reduced educational performance linked to excessive mobile phone use. What I found surprising was that one in four countries has implemented smartphone bans in schools, including France and the Netherlands. The report also warns against an uncritical embrace of technology, emphasizing that not all technological changes lead to progress...which seems like sound reasoning to me.

Implications of a student-information-system-in-the-cloud hack

On January 7, at 11:10 p.m. in Dubai, Romy Backus received an email from education technology giant PowerSchool notifying her that the school she works at was one of the victims of a data breach that the company discovered on December 28. PowerSchool said hackers had accessed a cloud system that housed a trove of students’ and teachers’ private information, including Social Security numbers, medical information, grades, and other personal data from schools all over the world.... The next morning after getting the email from PowerSchool, Backus said she went to see her manager, triggered the school’s protocols to handle data breaches, and started investigating the breach to understand exactly what the hackers stole from her school, since PowerSchool didn’t provide any details related to her school in its disclosure email.

Earlier this year, PowerSchool announced that there had been a data breach of its cloud-based student information system. Its website says it is the largest provider of cloud-based education software for K-12 education in the U.S., serving more than 75% of students in North America. That is 18,000 customers to support more than 60 million students in the United States alone.

The article discusses the aftermath of the data breach at PowerSchool and how the company was not responsive to questions of the nature of the breach. School administrators were left scrambling for information, and a system administrator at the American School of Dubai took the initiative to investigate the situation. Romy Backus collaborated with peers to create a comprehensive guide detailing how to assess the breach and identify stolen data.

Collaboration is common in the education sector, probably because of the generally limited resources for technology cybersecurity. I've experienced this myself in higher education, where a sense of camaraderie and sharing permeates the profession. I think a lot of the open source movement comes out of education...it would be interesting to know if that feeling is backed up by actual data.

Google declared end-of-life for Chromebooks that schools want to keep using

At a lofty warehouse in East Oakland, a dozen students have spent their summer days tinkering with laptops. The teens, who are part of Oakland Unified’s tech repair internship, have fixed broken screens, faulty keyboards and tangled wiring, mending whatever they can. But despite their technological prowess, there’s one mechanical issue the tech interns haven’t been able to crack: expired Chromebooks. With a software death date baked into each model, older versions of these inexpensive computers are set to expire three to six years after their release. Despite having fully functioning hardware, an expired Chromebook will no longer receive the software updates it needs, blocking basic websites and applications from use.

This story has a happy ending—Google later extended its support for Chromebooks to 10 years—but it is a reminder of how much influence has been given to technology companies in the education space. The article discusses the issue of built-in software "death dates" for Chromebooks, which render many older models obsolete after three to six years despite their hardware still functioning. 2023 was at the point where the first round of Chromebooks used during the pandemic were reaching their original end-of-life, so the monetary expense and the stagger e-waste of still-usable machines were stunning.

Advise for buying educational technology

The ed tech industry’s pandemic-era boom has meant K-12 schools and universities are receiving sales pitches for an abundance of new products—from generative AI writing tools and math tutors to robot security guards and lightboards. But with those choices, and billions of dollars being spent annually on ed tech, educators and school administrators say they also have a problem: There is no mandatory licensing process that certifies that ed tech products work as advertised or that they can be trusted with sensitive student information. Experts have called for countries to establish licensing bodies for educational technology, but for the time being, ed tech companies have largely been left to regulate themselves through voluntary, industry-funded certification programs.

Buying technology you can trust is challenging, often because it seems like "trust" is not a selling point that companies emphasize. These decisions can be even more challenging in the educational technology space, where there are concerns about student privacy. This article offers some suggestions for evaluating technology purchases.

Chromebooks rejected in Denmark over student privacy concerns

Danish privacy regulator Datatilsysnet has ruled that cities in Denmark need considerably more assurances about privacy to use Google service that may expose children’s data, reports BleepingComputer. The agency found that Google uses student data from Chromebooks and Google Workplace for Education “for its own purposes,” which isn’t allowed under European privacy law. Municipalities will need to explain by March 1st how they plan to comply with the order to stop transferring data to Google, and won’t be able to do so at all starting August 1st, which could mean phasing out Chromebooks entirely.

The regulator found that Google uses data from Chromebooks and Google Workspace for Education for its own purposes, violating European privacy laws. This decision stems from concerns that Google’s use of student data for performance analytics and AI development is inappropriate, even if not used for targeted advertising. Google had been in discussions with Danish municipalities since July 2022 to address privacy issues, and it's unclear whether the issue has been resolved. The latest information I could find in English is from September 2024, and it said that "it is still not settled how the municipalities will ensure compliance and accordance with the decision from the DPA."

When in doubt, the easy answer is to filter everything objectionable. It isn't a good answer

CIPA [Children’s Internet Protection Act], a federal law passed in 2000, requires schools seeking subsidized internet access to keep students from seeing obscene or harmful images online—especially porn. School districts all over the country, like Rockwood in the western suburbs of St. Louis, go much further, limiting not only what images students can see but what words they can read. Records obtained from 16 districts in 11 different states show just how broadly schools block content, forcing students to jump through hoops to complete assignments and keeping them from resources that could support their health and safety.

As my kids were going through high school, they ran into this problem, too, and had to use their mobile devices or the home internet to complete assignments. But I remember this problem back in the mid-2000s when I was asked to serve on a technology advisory committee for public libraries. Internet filters, initially intended to block pornographic content, have crept into blocking access to educational and health resources. The investigation revealed that districts often overblock content, affecting access to vital resources like suicide prevention sites and sexual health information. The Markup found that filtering systems used in schools categorize the internet broadly, leading to significant censorship, especially of LGBTQ+ supportive content while allowing access to anti-LGBTQ+ materials. Clearly, there is a need for a more nuanced approach to web filtering in schools to allow students to access a broad range of information essential to learning and general well-being.

This Week I Learned: It is much harder to get to the Sun than it is to Mars

The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass in our solar system. Its gravitational pull is what keeps everything here, from tiny Mercury to the gas giants to the Oort Cloud, 186 billion miles away. But even though the Sun has such a powerful pull, it’s surprisingly hard to actually go to the Sun: It takes 55 times more energy to go to the Sun than it does to go to Mars.

I suppose it that headline above needs some nuance. It is easy to get to the Sun...just escape Earth's gravity and point yourself there. It is hard to get to the Sun in a controlled way that means you won't burn up along the way.

What did you learn this week? Let me know on Mastodon or Bluesky.

Mittens is the print supervisor