Education is being increasingly technologised. Educational technology, or so-called ed-tech, is gaining considerable prominence in schools. Educators and educational institutions are employing information communication technologies and the internet in their pedagogical practices, in addition to using educational software programs, platforms, and portals as part of their curriculums. Many schools are adding more computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones to their classrooms, lectures halls, and libraries, and introducing specialised educational apps, databases, products, systems, and services into their teaching and instruction.
Ed-tech appears to be on an inexorable rise in most schools. Indeed, the growing market for ed-tech is becoming increasingly valuable. According to the International Data Corporation, in the United States alone, the ed-tech industry accounted for nearly $5 billion in sales in 2015. Further, digital educational products, content, and services are becoming more important than the school computer market. For instance, according to the Software and Information Industry Association, the American school system spends more than $8 billion annually on specialised educational software and digital materials. It is projected that this number will continue to grow as more schools shift to digital systems and infrastructures.
Many companies are entering the ed-tech field. Major internet and information companies, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, in addition to countless other educational organisations and start-ups, are creating new digital education products, content, and services in the hopes of gaining huge shares of this growing market.
Amazon, for example, recently announced the launch of Amazon Inspire, an education website and service featuring more than 2,000 digital educational learning materials including lesson plans, worksheets, and other instructional manuals and content for teachers. Its design is similar to Amazon’s retail website, featuring a search bar at the top of the page, user reviews, and star ratings for each product. According to Rohit Agarwal, Amazon’s general manager for primary and secondary education, Amazon Inspire is meant to provide teachers with easy and efficient access to educational materials. While there are no fees to join Amazon Inspire or use its digital educational materials, it still promotes, supports, and bolsters other Amazon products and services, not to mention Amazon’s overall brand and reach.
Other major companies are staking claims to the lucrative ed-tech market. Google recently announced that its free education app, Expeditions, would be made generally available to all schools, teachers and students. Google also introduced two new ed-tech products: Quizzes, an online form that teachers can use to administer and grade tests, and Cast for Education, an app enhancing class discussion by allowing teachers and students to share what is on their screens with one another.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has been working on integrating its technologies into classrooms by developing training programs for school administrators, online leadership courses, and services to support schools’ ed-tech implementation and maintenance.
There are also other ed-tech materials offered by smaller players, such as tes.com and teacherspayteachers.com, which allow teachers to search for online educational materials, download lesson plans, and tailor content to their particular educational context. Another popular ed-tech resource is Remind, a messaging app used by teachers to send homework reminders and classroom news with students and parents. It is also popular with schools’ sports team coaches to send weather updates and schedule changes to athletes and parents. Remind is widely used because it can be accessed on multiple channels such as the company’s website, mobile app, and text and voice messages.
There are concerns that digital educational materials, along with information communications technologies and the internet, are undermining learning abilities and concentration skills
It is argued, or at least hoped, that these and other ed-tech products and services will help enhance pedagogy, streamline administration, strengthen learning and literacy skills, and improve academic achievement. But ed-tech’s proposed benefits, not to mention its wider implications, remain relatively unproven and contested. Ed-tech’s proponents argue that these products and services promise to develop a stronger educational environment and expand intellectual horizons. Ed-tech’s detractors, however, argue that they are instead undermining education by fostering more distracted and shallow learning, creating and reinforcing online addictions, and jeopardizing privacy and security.
There are concerns that digital educational materials, along with information communications technologies and the internet, are undermining learning abilities and concentration skills. In The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (WW Norton and Company, 2011), Nicholas Carr explains how the internet, and its associated devices, services and content, is weakening mental capacities by forcing shallow scanning and skimming just to keep up with the continually expanding universe of information.
Carr argues that we are losing our abilities to pay sustained attention, critically analyse, deeply reflect, and remember what we have learned. These concerns are particularly alarming for the intellectual abilities of children and adolescents, whose brains and cognitive skills are in critical stages of development. In other words, kids and young adults are arguably having shallow learning experiences that, in turn, can have negative long-term consequences for their intellectual and cognitive abilities.
There are additional concerns that the online world is eroding memory. In Google’s Effects on Memory, Betsy Sparrow and her colleagues argue that information communication technologies and the internet are atrophying our memories by permitting us not to have to remember. They observe how, when we do not know or remember something, we tend to think of the computer as the place to learn or find it. When we expect to have information accessible immediately and anytime, we tend not to remember as well because we locate it externally (the computer) instead of internally (our mind), and because we assume we can always find and get it (online). We are increasingly prioritising where to find things, instead of remembering the things themselves. Thus, we are not exercising our memory as often as we used to, instead relying on Google than our own mind.
This memory atrophy is particularly alarming for kids and young adults since their abilities to remember are still being forged. If memory links and pathways are not properly developed at these ages, then their ability to remember could be underdeveloped.
There are further concerns regarding the seeming lack of privacy, security, and accountability because of inappropriate data collection in ed-tech programs and practices. Ed-tech is not only being used for instruction and learning, but also to collect and compile detailed, and in some cases personalised, information profiles and predictions on students. Ed-tech companies collect different kinds of personal data that can be aggregated to create individual academic and personal profiles of students, beginning in nursery and elementary school up until the university admissions process.
Most companies involved in and with ed-tech are gathering massive amounts of personal data about students’ entire educational abilities and careers, in addition to their personal lives including their (perceived) attitudes and behaviours. Some American state school systems, for example, have used a behaviour-monitoring app to generate data on children’s attitudes and behaviours, discerning which kids have positive attitudes and which display disruptive or negative behaviours.
There are worries that this sensitive information – from learning abilities or disabilities, disciplinary issues, family circumstances, and personal attributes – could be used for reasons other than their original intentions that, in turn, could negatively affect further educational or career prospects.
There are worries that this sensitive information could be used for reasons other than their original intentions that, in turn, could negatively affect further educational or career prospects
Indeed, these student information profiles could possibly be shared, sold, accessed, viewed, and used by various third parties for diverse reasons, from marketing purposes and university acceptance considerations to job applications.
As more schools continue to embrace ed-tech, questions about how to restrict these exploitative data-collection practices, and how to help ensure greater privacy and security protections, need to be addressed. Attempts to deal with these concerns remain relatively minimal and haphazard. In the US, for example, many attempts have been piecemeal and limited in their scope. Many school systems, in fact, do not explicitly limit or regulate their ed-tech providers’ data collection or usage practices.
A major exception, however, has been in the state of California where legislators passed the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act, to help regulate the ed-tech industry. This law helps ensure that students’ personal data can be used only for legitimate academic purposes. It prohibits ed-tech companies and their apps, programs, platforms, products, portals, and services from creating personal profiles of students; sharing, selling, or disclosing students’ personal data; and marketing to students. It therefore limits the reach of these companies into students’ lives by preventing the creation of unnecessary personal profiles as well as using this personal data for non-academic activities beyond their original intention or requirement. This law’s goal is to improve these companies’ accountability, transparency, and data collection practices while simultaneously guaranteeing students’ privacy and security.
This California legislation will hopefully influence other jurisdictions to take ed-tech regulations more seriously. It is also hoped that it will have wider implications beyond ed-tech by helping to strengthen personal data rights for all. A person who agrees to allow a company or some other third party collect or take their personal data for a particular reason, has the right to decide whether that company or third party may use that same data for unrelated purposes. In other words, personal data should only be used for other activities with the person’s permission. Indeed, this legislation, and others like it, will help establish standards applicable to broader privacy and security debates.
Ed-tech is likely to increasingly dominate the education sector as more companies and governments invest in ed-tech content, products, platforms, portals, and services, and school systems accept the introduction of these new information communication technologies into their classrooms, lectures halls, and libraries.
Although its effects on teaching and learning, as well as intellectual and cognitive development and memory, remain uncertain, it is hoped that education, particularly at the primary and secondary levels, can benefit from these technological innovations.
But ed-tech for ed-tech’s sake is not in any student’s, let alone the wider school system’s, interest. It is therefore up to governments, educators, administrators, school systems, students, parents, and the public to hold ed-tech accountable to help ensure that it actually does advance educational endeavours whilst protecting and respecting personal privacy and security rights.
Marc Kosciejew is head of department and lecturer in the Department of Library Information and Archive Sciences in the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences, University of Malta.