Educational technology is not without its costs. Increasingly one of the costs of using EdTech is the storage and use of student data. Each time a student used a device or logs into a web site a corporation or start-up collects data about what that student did and for how long. What happens to that data? How is it used? Who owns it and whose responsibility is to protect the rights of students in this digital learning environment? We'll explore these and any associated issues as we examine what might happen when educators trade student information for free services and try and decide what we can do to protect student data rights. Participants will leave the session with a better understanding of some of the potential dangers of using educational technology, how data is used and some questions to consider about the potential costs to students when we use EdTech.

1. November 5, 2015
The Impending Student Data Privacy Crisis
By: Andrew Campbell (@acampbell99)

2. The Impending Student Data Privacy Crisis
https://goo.gl/GOIaTz

3. Critical Thinking at an EdTech
Conference?

4. An angry father walks into Target in
Minnesota…

5. The store manager investigated…

6. Shopping habits are extremely resistant to
change, except….
…immediately after a major life change
(e.g. moving, marriage, birth)

8. Andrew Pole, Sr Mgr, Media/DB Mktng, Target
•In charge of predictive data analysis for
Target
•Send families with children christmas flyers
with toys
•Tasked with predicting when women are
pregnant

9. •Discovered that many pregnant women buy same 25
products at end of 1st trimester
•e.g. unscented lotion, vitamins with zinc, cocoa
butter, cotton balls, etc.
•Predicted due dates for tens of thousands of women,
within a few days.
Pregnancy Score

10. •23 years old & lives in Atlanta
•March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large
enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and
magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug.
•87 percent chance that she’s pregnant and that
her delivery date is sometime in late August.
•If she receives a coupon via e-mail, it will
most likely cue her to buy online.
•They know that if she receives an ad in the
mail on Friday, she frequently uses it on a
weekend
•If they reward her with a printed receipt that
entitles her to a free cup of Starbucks coffee,
she’ll use it when she comes back again.
Fictional shopper, Jenny Ward

11. This is the world our students live in
A world where every detail of their life
is observed, recorded, stored & analyzed
And educators are complicit in this.

12. “Cybersecurity will eclipse terrorism”
FBI Director Robert Mueller (March 2012)
Digital Privacy is one of the defining
issues of our time

13. Canada Data
Breaches
•36% of Canadian businesses
•89 per cent of the
Canadian respondents:
sensitive or confidential
data stolen
•Average total cost of a
data breach in Canada is
$5.32 million

14. 60,000 Canadians
Huge Canadian Data Breaches
900 SINs by 19 YO from London, Ont
Avid Life Media, Toronto, Ont

15. Are Schools and Students at Risk?

16. BC Education Data Breach
3.4M student records containing
"Psychological assessments, describing in-care status,
substance abuse, family problems” (September 22, 2015)

17. Why Are Schools Now At Risk?
“K-12 communities
have been slow to
adopt the strict
kinds of security
standards that a
retail or banking
customer has had for
many years,” Maggie
Hallbach, VP Verizon

18. “…student data are “highly sought after”
on the black market…”
Threat of Data-Privacy Litigation Fuels
District Insurance Purchases. Education
Week, October 19, 2015.

19. Schools Are Waking
Up to Cyber Security
“The Dothan City, Ala.,
school board on
Monday allocated
$25,000 to purchase
cyber liability insurance
to cover the board in
case a cyberattacker
gains access to district
information”.
September 22, 2015

20. Given all this, shouldn’t we be discussing
Student Data Privacy?

21. So What
About The
Classroom
Teacher?

22. Ontario: Who’s Responsible for Learning
Materials?
7. (1) The principal of a school, in consultation with the teachers
concerned, shall select from the list of the textbooks approved by the
Minister the textbooks for the use of pupils of the school, and the selection
shall be subject to the approval of the board. R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 298, s. 7 (1).

23. Ultimately, Educators are responsible for
the Education Resources used in the
classroom.
Are you fulfilling your responsibility to
your students?

24. When it comes to learning resources…
Teachers are most likely to use free
online resources when they need new
learning resources. (P4E, Digital
Learning in Ontario Schools, 2014)

25. Technology in the Classroom
$344 Billion$382 Billion$483 Billion

26. $31.31 billion (2013)
$59.90 billion (2018)
+13.9%
EdTech is BIG Business
($3-6 billion in Canada (estimated))

27. EdTech Companies Collect A Lot of Data
About Students

28. “The amount of data being collected (by
EdTech apps) is staggering. The most
adept are scooping up as many as 10
million unique data points on each
child, each day. That’s orders of
magnitude more data than Netflix or
Facebook or even Google collect on
their users.”
‘The big biz of spying on little kids’
POLITICO, FALL 2014

29. “if a marketer knocked on your door
and asked to spend several hours
secretly observing your child, recording
everything he or she was doing and
saying for secret purposes, you’d
probably tell them to take a hike. This is
happening every day with very little
resistance.”
Sara M. Grimes
University of Toronto, Faculty of
Information

30. Why Do EdTech Companies Collect
So Much Student Data?
•Tracking progress
•Improvement
•Advertising
•Revenue

31. “Data is the real asset”
Sal Khan founder of Khan Academy at
an academic conference, Fall, 2014
•Tracks the academic progress of
students 13 and older
•logs student location
•Monitors student web browsing
•Reserves the right to seek out
personal details about users from
other sources
•Builds profiles of their interests
and connections.
•Sends them customized advertising
(changed in 2014)
•May share personal information
with app developers and other
external partners

32. •name/address
•email
•date of birth
•gender
•country
•interests
•hobbies
•lifestyle choices
•groups with whom they are
affiliated (schools,
companies)
•videos and/or pictures
•private messages, bulletins
or personal statements
…may share
information about
users with consumer
products, telecom,
financial, military,
market research,
entertainment, and
educational
services companies
according to its
privacy policy.

33. Google Apps for Education (GAFE)
“Google said (data mining) didn’t
apply to students using Google
Apps for Education…Google now
admits that it does data mine
student emails for ad-targeting
purposes outside of school, even
when ad serving in school is
turned off.” Jeff Gould safegov.org

34. Ontario students who
use GAFE have their
emails scanned and
metadata collected.
“Scanning is done on
all incoming emails, is
100 per cent
automated and can’t be
turned off”
Google spokesperson
Jennifer Kaiser
#Onted GAFE

35. Two Types of Data
Personally Identifiable
Data
“…data that could
potentially identify a
specific individual. Any
information that can be
used to distinguish one
person from another
Anonymous Data
“…data that by virtue of
the method of collection
can never reasonably be
connected with the
person providing them”

36. There’s No Such Thing as
Anonymous Data
Used the anonymous
credit transactions of
1.1 million people
and was able to
identify individuals
in the dataset using
the date and location
of just four of their
transactions
MIT scientist Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye

37. Riding With The Stars
Identified celebrities cab ride details by
re-identifying public data from the NYC
public taxi database.

38. Class Dojo
•Behaviour tracking program
•Used in 1/3 of all US schools
•Saves data about children
and their behaviour
•How is it secured? Stored?
•What if it is sold, lost or
stolen?

39. Remember: Online
Services Aren’t Free
We are paying for learning
resources with student data.

40. Cullen Hoback
Director of”Terms & Conditions May Apply”
“Your data is worth $500 a year to Google. That’s a lot of
money. If you had to make the choice of ‘Am I going to
pay Google $500 or am I going to pay with my data?’, at
least you’d understand how much your data is worth”
What Is Student Data Worth?

41. What Can We do?

42. What Can We do?
• Be aware of the risk & be proactive
(read the TOS)

43. SMARTeacher Inc., Burlington, Ontario

44. What Can We do?
•Be aware of the risk & be proactive
(read the TOS)
•Use services and apps that follow the
PCC guidelines

45. Ganz Toy Company, Woodbridge, Ontario

46. On March 7, 2012, The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada initiated a
complaint against Ganz under subsection 11(2) of the Act.
In 2005 Ganz, a privately-held Canadian partnership, introduced the concept of web-
enabled plush toys called “Webkinz” (“Pets”) and launched the accompanying ‘Webkinz
World’ website

47. Recommendations
Minimize the collection of personal information
Prevent the “inadvertent collection” of personal
information (usernames)
Deleting inactive accounts
Privacy practices must be understandable
Default Settings Should Be Private

48. What Can We do?
•Be aware of the risk & be proactive
(read the TOS)
•Use services and apps that follow the
PCC guidelines
•Develop effective privacy protocols
in schools

49. A K-12 Primer for British Columbia
Teachers Posting Students’ Work Online
(@jhengstler)
1.Who does student work belong to?
2.What can be posted & how will it
be identified?
3.Where will work be posted &
audience?
4.Has INFORMED CONSENT been
received? (alternate
accommodation?)
5.Is there a plan to respond to an
incident?

50. We MUST start educating students
about data privacy

52. What Can We do?
•Be aware of the risk & be proactive
(read the TOS)
•Use services and apps that follow the
PCC guidelines
•Develop effective privacy protocols
in schools
•Start talking about Student Data
Privacy

53. “One thing is clear: those who
have the power to protect
student privacy will not do so as
long as they can continue to
subsidize the cost of public
education with student data.”
Jessy Irwin. (@JessySaurusRex)
Grooming Students for A Lifetime of Surveillance

54. Meanwhile, back at Target…

55. Thank you for listening
Enjoy the rest of the conference
AndrewSCampbell.Com
@acampbell99