EdTech needs Schooling
Links
- Read more of our work on EdTech
- Find out more about Google Classroom in Denmark
- Our tracker looking at the use of EdTech around the world
The use of technologies in education has been expanding rapidly. More often than not, that expansion hasn't been accompanied by comprehensive assessments of their impact, appropriate safeguards or responsible practices to ensure respect for human rights, whether in procurement processes or data protection safeguards. Many Education technologies (EdTech) solutions and their implementation in educational spaces present huge issues.
Some EdTech has real potential to improve access to education, particularly in remote and underserved communities. Access to the internet and technology in classrooms is a hard fought struggle around the world, but an important one. However, it is vital that the introduction of technology to the classroom is accompanied by appropriate and robust human rights protections to ensure that every student around the world can safely access an education, without giving up their right to privacy or becoming hostages to a future of data exploitation.
After looking at the use of EdTech across the globe, we found that state agencies, companies, and schools and other educational institutions all need to reconsider the way they operate to ensure the safety of the students they are responsible for.
What is Education Technology (EdTech)?
EdTech is a collective name for software that is used for educational purposes, in an educational setting, or that processes students' data. That includes software used to administer educational spaces, such as databases used to hold students' data, systems used to deliver teachers' lessons and materials, and systems that provide lessons themselves.
What is the problem?
Schools and other educational institutions are specific and fraught environments. Frequently neither children nor their parents, have a choice in whether they can attend school or other educational space, or which one they attend, and little to no say in what type of technology their educational institution uses.
Yet almost every educational space in the world has introduced or is in the process of introducing EdTech solutions. We are concerned because intrusive technologies are introduced without: comprehensive human rights, including data protection, impact assessments; transparency; and necessary human rights protections, such as appropriate regulatory framework or effective oversight; to protect children and young people. In the meantime, introduction of EdTech is driven by the commercial interests of companies without any measures taken to safeguards students' rights.
Yet, the data gathered - and sometimes shared - about students' lives in educational spaces can follow them for the rest of their lives and can be extremely sensitive.
What is PI doing?
- We have been tracking the use of EdTech around the world.
- We conduct research on technologies and how they are used in schools in specific countries, such as India and others, in order to expose the lack of compliance with basic human rights standards.
- We advocate before national and international bodies regarding our concerns regarding the EdTech solutions that have been introduced and recommending them to take steps to protect students’ rights to privacy and access to education.
- Together with our global network, we advocate and campaign to protect the rights to privacy, access to education, and autonomy.
News
7th November 2024
24th April 2020
Examples of Abuse
Want to know how this translate in the real world? Here is the latest example in the news.The Los Angeles school district turned off “Ed”, a $6 million chatbot, after the company paid to develop it got into financial trouble. The incident provides a cautionary tale for Britain’s new Labour government, which has talked of using AI in schools to free up teacher time and revive public
Our Advocacy
Summary
The expansion of facial recognition in educational spaces raises serious human rights concerns, urging states to ban the technology and implementers to stop using it.