Some look Zuckerberg's gift horse in the mouth
“If I was advising Zuckerberg, I think the question is: Is he searching for a silver-bullet solution?”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to pour billions of dollars into a high-tech idea that has been billed as the future of learning, but which critics see as a half-baked notion that could jeopardize student privacy and spread ideas despised by public school advocates.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced Tuesday night that they’re pouring 99 percent of their Facebook shares into charity through their new Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The shares are currently worth about $45 billion. One of the goals of that initiative, inspired by the birth of their daughter Max, is to advance “personalized learning," although it isn't clear how much of the money might be invested in that.
That approach to learning is generating lots of buzz — the Obama administration, for instance, has doled out tens of millions for efforts to use it across the country. But some say personalized learning is a fuzzy idea and there’s little research on its effectiveness — and what’s out there is mixed.
“Many believe in it and see the future in it,” said Douglas Levin, president of EdTech Strategies, LLC. “But we need to find proof points of where it’s working and then there’s the question of scaling it up.”
“If I was advising Zuckerberg, I think the question is: Is he searching for a silver-bullet solution?” Levin said.
Personalized learning involves using technology like computers and tablets — along with help from teachers — to shape instruction that responds to an individual student’s needs. The pace of instruction, the approach to teaching and even what’s taught are all adjusted to how students best learn as well as their interests.
That can mean collecting data on individual student performance, like how students tackle problems and answer questions, what gives them pause and what they’re able to breeze through.
Some worry that such large amounts of student data could be used to sell products and would be vulnerable to hackers. That data collection has “tremendous negative implications for privacy,” said Leonie Haimson, a parent and privacy advocate and the executive director of Class Size Matters.
For example, she said, parents worry about third parties and companies using student data to target ads at their children.
Critics are also concerned that Zuckerberg will join the ranks of reform-minded billionaires like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Eli Broad who want to shake up what they see as a failing public school system in ways that many teachers and parents may oppose.
That suspicion is heightened by the fact that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is an LLC, not a nonprofit, which some see as a sign that Zuckerberg may use the
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-216373#ixzz3tHPRsCoa