Join us next month in Indy to discuss privacy & online learning!

Next month in Indianapolis, the Network for Public Education will be holding our annual conference on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 20-21. More info and how to register here.

I will be participating in two amazing panels focused on how protect students and teachers from the growing threat to data privacy and resist the the expansion of online learning which is undermining the quality of public education.

The first workshop, to be held on Saturday Oct. 20 morning at 10:50 AM is entitled Outsourcing the classroom to ed tech and machine-learning: why parents & teachers should resist . Presenting with me are two brilliant bloggers and thinkers whose work I never fail to learn from, Audrey Watters and Peter Greene.

Audrey has single-handedly and fiercely taken on the ed tech industry for many years and critiques their claims on her essential blog, Hack Education. If you haven't subscribed to her newsletter, you absolutely should do so. She is currently writing a book to be published by MIT Press called Teaching Machines.

Peter is a Pennsylvania teacher who retired last year, but even while teaching was among the most prolific and incisive education bloggers at Curmudjucation. He also now writes a regular column for Forbes. In his writings, he deconstructs and eviscerates the agenda of the corporate reformers and faux philanthropists, whether it be the promotion of online education, Common Core, high-stakes testing or any of the other snake oil disseminated by private interests bent on disrupting public education. He shows how they are based neither on research, common sense, or the experience of teachers or parents.

During the second workshop, held later the same day, our panel will present A Teacher Data Privacy Toolkit: How to protect your students’ privacy and your own. Marla Kilfoyle and Melissa Tomlinson of the Badass Teachers Association, Rachael Stickland co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and I will offer some of the highlights and practical tips of our yet-to-be released Toolkit, the product of a year-long collaboration between the PCSP and the BATs, with support from the Rose Foundation, the NEA and the AFT.

From responses to an online survey and focus groups of teachers, administrators and other school staff, we heard loud and strong how educators were deeply frustrated by the lack of training and knowledge they had about how to minimize and safeguard the increasing amount of personal data being collected by schools and vendors, and how they can work to ensure it isn't breached or improperly used. This toolkit, like the Parent Toolkit for Student Privacy we along with Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood released in 2017, represents an attempt to provide the support and information that teachers need to act as responsible guardians of their students' privacy -- and their own.

Please join us in Indianapolis - more amazing speakers and panels are described here. -- Leonie Haimson

NPE conference Oct. 14-15; please come if you can!

There are only about thirty seats left for our annual Network for Public Education conference, this year in Oakland CA from Oct. 14-15.  If you've never been before to an NPE conference, you are missing something terrific. We have some fabulous keynote speakers, pictured to the right. In addition, you can check out the schedule of workshops.

I'll be moderating two panels: One on the myths and reality of online learning, along with Mark Miller, the former President of the PA School Board Association and Marla Kilfoyle, the Executive Director of the Badass Teachers Association.

I'll also be doing a workshop on the fight for children's privacy, with Rachael Stickland of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and Josh Golin of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood.

Please come and share with friends and colleagues, especially those who live in the Bay Area.

Please vote now to send Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and other grassroots privacy activists to SXSWEdu!

Cross-posted at Student Privacy Matters 

Each spring, thousands of edtech entrepreneurs, and advocates funded by the edtech industry, descend upon Austin’s SXSWEdu conference to promote their products and publicize their point of view.

For example, it’s where Bill Gates launched inBloom Inc. in 2013, to push the expansion of data-mining student personal information and online learning. Rarely do you bump into any classroom teachers, parent leaders or grassroots education activists attending, much less find one on stage. We hope to change that in 2018.

Please help us by voting for our panel proposal “Shielding data privacy and resisting online learning.” Our panelists include attorney and privacy activist Bradley Shear, creator of the  annual National Student Data Deletion Day, research associate Faith Boninger, who has just co-authored a terrific new report on student privacy for the National Education Policy Center, Marla Kilfoyle, the Executive Director of Badass Teachers Association (BATS)  and me.


The BATs NEA Caucus supported, and pushed for several pro-privacy and anti-online learning resolutions that were adopted at the recent NEA Representative Assembly.

To submit your vote:
1.     Simply fill out this form.
2.     Sign in and select “PANELPICKER.”
3.     Search for our panel name “Shielding data privacy and resisting online learning.”
4.     Click on “Vote Up.”

The more votes we get, the better our chances of being selected – so please vote today and ask your friends to vote too! The voting window closes Friday, August 25th.

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Background

In spring of 2013, Bill Gates took the stage at SXSWEdu to unveil inBloom, his foundation’s $100 million student data collection project which was being piloted in nine states and school districts across the nation. inBloom surfaced in every corner of the conference that year with parties, meet-ups, and a code-a-thon where cash “bounties” were awarded to teams who developed the best apps using the inBloom data store.

At the same time, parents whose children’s data was going to be ensnared in the project were raising their voices in opposition – concerned about how inBloom threatened student privacy and could accelerate the use of online learning. After considerable parental backlash, inBloom shuttered its doors in 2014. Shortly after, parents involved in the fight formed the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.

Since then, student data privacy has gained national attention and SXSWEdu has featured countless workshops and presentations on the subject – including on the reasons for inBloom’s demise, without inviting a single parent involved in the fight to explain their opposition. We want to change that next year by going directly to the belly of the beast, and inviting others who are active in the resistance movement on the ground to protect student privacy and prevent the expansion of online learning to join with us. You can help by casting your vote in support of our panel here!