Data analytics are promising. Whether it’s the quantified self, the quantified child, personalized learning or adaptive learning the possibilities for the use of data are remarkable. There’s just one problem. It’s the data, and the quantity of data being collected about our children. It is being collected by private companies and startups, and it’s being sold to people we don’t want to have it. inBloom shut down amidst these concerns in April. We have FERPA, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, to protect this kind of information. But as often happens, technology took a big leap beyond regulation, which moves at a slow pace. People often come to the rescue when technology moves faster than regulation. Larry Lessig founded Creative Commons for copyright and IP challenges when digitization moved faster than regulation. We have yet to see what moves will be made to start protecting learner data. This article is from DML Central, and Doug Belshaw who, as always, expands on this issue so well. “There is some bad news, however — another mess that we are nowhere near solving. In fact, we’re so far buried by the logic of it that we will have to dig ourselves out. That mess is venture capitalists buying our personal data through startups.”
via Reclaiming the Web for the Next Generation | DMLcentral.
New Images of Education 