Janet writes, > Here is an education student data proposal. > Apologies if this has already been linked. > Building a Student Data Infrastructure: Privacy, Transparency and the Gates > Foundation-Funded inBloom > <http://hackeducation.com/2013/02/10/inbloom-student-data-privacy- security-transparency/>
An interesting link Janet. Thanks. So, as this link notes, the reasonably widely respected "do-good" Gates Foundation is now also involved in the creation/promotion of opensource education-data software infrastructures. <https://www.inbloom.org> A lofty aim. However as this link also notes, one fraught with concerns. As the writer notes, "After all, its a project with some $100 million in funding from the Gates and Carnegie Foundations and built (in part) by News Corp-owned Wireless Generation, with a new CEO who comes from Promethean, maker of interactive whiteboards." Both NewsCorp & Promethean are strongly profit-driven with somewhat dodgy reputations in the past for their openness, and any charitable heartiness. But, from personal experience, any such software for education could well be very useful. So time will tell if this is simply a grab for the entire education/school big data records of a generation of young people, or one useful, private & secure education record-keeping software infrastructure. Thus, I would suggest Aussie schools etc NOT jump on board quite just yet, as this link writer also 'suggests' regarding our children's edu-big-data. (Link Quote ..) Building an Student Data Infrastructure The Shared Learning Collaborative, a Gates Foundation-funded initiative, rebranded itself this week. Theres a new name inBloom, Inc. but the mission and plans remain the same, the new non-profit insists. That mission is to build an open source, cloud-based education data infrastructure in the hopes of addressing a number of problems schools face: the lack of data interoperability between the various databases and software systems that they utilize and the merits of spending money to update outdated administrative IT (versus, say, buying instructional or other tech and/or versus spending money on something altogether non- tech). While were seeing an explosion in the number of technology tools that schools utilize (hardware, software, apps, the Web), these tend not to talk to one another nor to the student information systems that store students education records. That makes for a lot of bureaucratic inefficiencies with teachers and staff manually downloading, uploading, re- entering student information rosters, grades, and so on into various applications. All this also means that its difficult to build a full profile on students and to track and support their progress. The latter is of increasing interest to schools and to states and to service providers, particularly now that education is supposed to be more data driven. Concerns about Sharing and Storing Student Data Data driven thats code for more standardized testing, some folks fear. More testing, more hiring and firing of teachers based on testing, more surveillance. In that light, its no surprise that the Shared Learning Collaborative now iBloom has faced some pushback from those who link it to corporate education reform, After all, its a project with some $100 million in funding from the Gates and Carnegie Foundations and built (in part) by News Corp-owned Wireless Generation, with a new CEO who comes from Promethean, maker of interactive whiteboards. A number of organizations the Massachusetts ACLU, the Massachusetts state PTA, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Class Size Matters, and others have expressed their concerns about the project, arguing that the initiative will have schools sharing confidential student and teacher information with the Gates Foundation. The information to be shared will likely include student names, test scores, grades, disciplinary and attendance records, special education and free lunch status. According to Leonie Haimson, executive director of the NYC organization Class Size Matters, this data grab by the Shared Learning Collaborative now inBloom is unprecedented. Haimson contends that this initiative, currently being piloted in 9 states (Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina), has been undertaken without parental consent and furthermore will open access to students data to third-party vendors, again, without parental consent. Open access, open source and open this and open that, Haimson told me in a phone interview on Friday, suggesting that the interest in student data was more about opening for business and appealing to startups than it was addressing a demand by teachers or parents. Haimson also cites concerns about privacy and security in the cloud, as schools move their data storage and servers from a local to a virtualized environment, pointing to inBlooms privacy and security policies that state that the company cannot guarantee the security of the information stored in inBloom or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted. I wonder if NY state and the other states involved realize that they may be vulnerable for multi-million dollar class action lawsuits if and when this highly sensitive data leaks out, Haimson wrote in a recent blog post, especially since Gates and inBloom appear to have disclaimed all responsibility for its safety. .. Thanks, Janet Stephen Loosley Message sent using MelbPC WebMail Server
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