6
Data and Privacy
All businesses use data to improve their balance sheets. They use data to decide what to sell, who to sell it to, what price to fix and how to tailor their advertisements. It is the machine-learning algorithms that make sense of data. Therefore, the winner is whoever has the better data and algorithms. Data is the new gold – and the new Achilles heel.
Does data here mean just personal addresses and bank accounts?
What about the number of mouse clicks a user makes while visiting a web site?
As stewards of their own data and that of their students, it is imperative that teachers know what kind of AI data is useful, what forms do they take and how can users’ privacy be protected.
AI and the business of education
“EdTech” is the industry that makes technological applications for education – including those using artificial intelligence. These can be small companies or start-ups. They can be internet giants that are starting to pump money into education. They can also be entities with public funding.
Some EdTech software has to be bought. The rest is free, with income from other sources – often targeted ads and reselling of user data. Whatever financial model is used in EdTech AI, money can be made.
What does this mean for you and your students? Is there such a thing as a free lunch? How do we secure our classrooms while enjoying the fruits of a greedy industry?
Tool creation and you
Education does not have to change in order to accommodate technology. “Learning environments that start with technology often go down unwanted paths”1. Any tool should be based on sound pedagogical theories. Furthermore, to be most effective, it should be co-created in teams involving teachers, pedagogical experts and computer scientists2.
So, ready to start?
1 Groff, J., Personalized Learning : The state of the field and future directions, Centre for curriculum redesign, 2017.
2 Du Boulay, B., Poulovasillis, A., Holmes, W., and Mavrikis, M., Artificial Intelligence And Big Data Technologies To Close The Achievement Gap, 2018.
