The boom of the epidemic in the Venetian industry in the K-12 company means that schools and universities receive sales stadiums for the abundance of new products-from the tools of artificial intelligence writing and mathematics teachers to robot security guards and lighting panels. But with these options, billions of dollars say annually on ED Tech, teachers and school officials say they are also a problem: there is no mandatory license that testifies that ED Tech products are working as announced or can be trusted with sensitive student information.
Experts called on the two countries to create licensing bodies for educational technology, but at the present time, ED technology companies have left largely to organize themselves through volunteer degrees funds funded by the industry.
The result is that schools use many products that may harm children. This week, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a report on the global use of educational technology that warned that “the privacy, safety and well -being of children and their well -being is at risk due to the lack of supervision of the educational technology industry.” Last year, an investigation into Human Rights Watch found that many of the products approved by government agencies were shining on children.
For example, Edodo, one of the companies that were identified in the report, once had 10,000,000 estimated users. It has been out of work last year and since then it has been fined by the Federal Ministry of Justice and Trade Committee to illegally collecting and storing data for users under the age of 13.
“We have developed more thinking as institutions in buying tea bags more than we do technology,” said Ann Mary Scott, an open education advocacy that previously led to the purchase of universities in the United Kingdom and Canada. “We buy fair trade tea … and we buy the proactoring systems completely.”
The signs were reported about the student’s privacy, the algorithm, and other damages that could stem from ED Tech, teachers, officials, and parents wondered naturally: So what is the ED technology safe to use?
Although we cannot recommend the products appropriate for an individual school, we have talked to teachers, purchasing and parents to collect the best advice and recommendations to evaluate the countless products offered. Here are the four important questions that they told them that students, parents and teachers should ask.
1. Will this technology help?
Experts, practitioners and parents who talked that the first step for the school in buying new technology must be to stop and ask whether the technology is required. Are the latest programs or devices the most effective solution for the school? Sometimes – a new tool may be proposed directly by a sales teacher or representative – this step is skipped.
Holly Du, director of technology at the regional school unit in Maine, said she was shocked to find out the number of different ED Tech tools in her small area that she started using during the epidemic. The sales stadiums did not stop. “We get a lot of emails from the sellers,” she said. “I was flooded, I was flooded every day.”
She and Sarah Radcliffe, the future director of learning in the educational area in Tuna, in Wisconsin, said that maintaining detailed inventory lists for the products used by teachers, how they use them, and the number of times they use, and when the contracts end, the boycott helped to evaluate what their schools actually need. Teachers can do this through a survey, or, which is not surprising, schools can buy the Tech ED systems to help them assess the amount of use of other technology.
Both officials also recommended that schools regularly survey their teachers to ask how they use the products they have and the products they imagine in the future.
2. Can I get a demonstration?
Scott, the former university technology official, recommended that before the school begins to buy or request a proposal (RFP), he must examine the options of available open sources, then invite the concerned sellers to show their tools for a group of teachers, students and information technology employees. Procurement demonstrations allow them to notice what different products can do in the market and how they suit them with the specific cases of use of the school community. Through this information, the school can formulate RFP more enlightened and endless in a long -term contract for a sign of the boxes on paper but does not meet the needs of the real world.
“I would like to have students on the purchasing team,” Skout said. “There is nothing like a student sitting in the room to change the way the supplier talks about their products. They cannot rely on the lazy stereotypes of the students’ essence. “
DOE, from RSU 40, said that she always tries to get experimental samples from devices or software licenses so that her teachers can products before making a larger purchase.
She said, “If you don’t really face it, I assume you really don’t know.”
Cassi Cristwell, one of the parents in Chicago and a co -chair of the parents ’coalition for the student’s privacy, said that once a school of research is conducted, this information should be shared with parents so that they can also understand the techniques used by their children, said Cassi Cristwell, a parent of the parents’ parents.
“[Schools] She said: “If they don’t do it, you can not really have any confidence in their calmness to choose the contractor in the first place.”
The Parents Alliance has created a tool group to assist parents to see and participate in technology decisions in their schools.
3. What do reviews say?
Once the school decides that it needs a new technology, it must determine the specified product that must be purchased, and is often chosen from among dozens of similar options.
Feliclava Hilman, a visitor colleague at the London College of Economics and Political Science that search for technical purchases, said that the lack of ED Tech’s national licensing programs makes it difficult for schools to know the products that are tested and proven that are snake oil.
Teachers and officials rely on peer networks to fill this information gap. But Hilman said that there are databases that are involved in strict reviews, standards, and peer reviews of ED Tech products:
Edtech Impact This database This is a partnership between industry and academics and other experts who provide basic information about products (such as their compatible systems, pricing and competitors) in addition to uniform assessments of school leaders on questions such as: Does the product improve educational attainment? Does it reduce the burden of teachers ’work?
Eduction Alliance Finland Certificates This Finnish organization uses teachers’ references to assessing ED technical products on educational standards such as: What are the learning goals that the product aims to meet? Does students help achieve these goals? Does the product involve students in negative or active learning?
4. Will the seller enhance the commitment of privacy for you?
It may be difficult to obtain the largest ED Tech sellers to control their standard contracts on important issues such as data privacy. But teachers say it is worth trying.
Doe said that ED Tech sellers often “tell me what I need” instead of the opposite. “It may be really difficult to get these great sellers to sign these [data privacy] Agreements, “added.
The answer, for RSU 40 and many other schools, was the organization. In many regions, regions or universities joined together to buy ED Tech products as a group, and gather their influence on potential sellers. RSU 40 and many other K-12 regions joined the student data privacy union and the classroom classrooms.
A consortium provides an example of data privacy agreements and hosts a database for sellers used by the participating areas. Radcliffe, a ready -made director of learning in Altoona, said that some sellers will have the signing of a private agreement with a new area, so the database is used to show that they have already agreed on the same conditions with other customers.
Chicago’s father and lawyer said that parents and organized students can be effective when the boycott officials are as well.
She and other parents in Chicago helped lead a successful campaign in 2021, persuaded the province to amend her contract with the college council and other companies until the sellers no longer prompted students to agree to data sharing agreements (by clicking on “acceptance” on the website, for example) to exceed what is permitted in sellers contracts with the province.
“You should not have to deliver sensitive data in order for your son to obtain free compulsory education,” said Chriswell. “In most cases, it is not really given an option to retreat.”
The increasing effect of Ed technology
The need to scrutinize ED Tech has exploded in recent years. In the academic year that COVID-19 had previously removed students from the classrooms and their devices, American schools spent up to 41 billion dollars on educational technology, according to the province’s estimates.
During the following years, the federal government allocated an unprecedented amount of $ 263 billion in financing emergency aid for schools, many of which used to buy the technology needed to learn a distance. In response to the request, the Global Venture Capital Investment in ED Tech has doubled from $ 7 billion in 2019 to $ 21 billion in 2021 (before declining to $ 11 billion last year).
It is clear that teachers are still collecting the resources they need to help ensure that the funds are spent well. They do not have all the answers. But they have at least some good questions.
Correction, July 28, 2023
A previous version of this story refers to the Edtech Impact database as a partnership between the Norwegian industry and academics. In fact, it is a partnership between industry, academics and other experts.
Clarification, July 28, 2023
A previous version of this story indicates two ED technical resources as institutions. It is updated to refer to them as databases.
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Photography by Pricela de Berrze 
on non -zubash
