CURMUDGUCATION: Ed Department Produces Advertisement For Computer-Based Education

CURMUDGUCATION: Ed Department Produces Advertisement For Computer-Based Education

Ed Department Produces Advertisement For Computer-Based Education

Even as Betsy DeVos has been demanding that public schools get their doors opened and their teachers back in the bricks and mortar classrooms, the department has announced its release of a slick "guide" to computer-based edu-flavored products. It's a nice package of marketing materials for the folks working the digitized street corner of the education privatization neighborhood.

From the Office of Educational Technology, we get the Parent and Family Digital Learning Guide. The 23-page promo opens with an introduction that suggests that this is to help those families that find themselves thrust into the world of digital learning (that's the department's preferred phrase, though I keep thinking of doing math by counting on your fingers). The intro also includes the usual disclaimer that "of course" technology is only a tool. This guide "focuses on empowering you with information and resources." 

So let's leap in. It's only 23 pages, but I've read it so that you don't have to.

Part One: Benefits of Digital Learning

Yes, we drop the pretense of "empowerment" pretty quickly, and move directly on to the sales pitch. Let's look at all the ways that digital learning is better.

See, "most American classrooms have taken a 'one size fits al' approach to instruction, a claim that will come as news to all the teachers who bust their humps designing differentiated instruction. But learning, the writers say, should be flexible and adapt, and just in case you might forget that this is CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Ed Department Produces Advertisement For Computer-Based Education

Will the students who didn’t show up for online class this spring go missing forever?

No participation in online learning could be detrimental

Will the students who didn’t show up for online class this spring go missing forever?

Districts are scrambling to locate the ‘lost’ kids of Covid and reengage them in school this fall

Monica Williams remembers the late May day she and first grade teacher Lizette Gutierrez reconnected with the four young siblings from Cable Elementary. No teachers from the San Antonio elementary had heard from the children since schools closed abruptly in March due to the pandemic.

When teachers at Cable Elementary in San Antonio couldn’t reach four siblings who attended the school this spring, Monica Williams of Communities in Schools was able to arrange a meeting with them at their grandmother’s house. Credit: Monica Williams

Williams is a former social worker who serves as a site coordinator for Communities in Schools of San Antonio, a support program for low-income families operating in more than 100 schools in Bexar County, including the city of San Antonio. She and her colleagues have had to intercede in evictions, deliver supplies and report children in dire circumstances to child protective services since the start of the pandemic. This time, she knew the family. She’d become acquainted with the children before the pandemic because of their academic struggles. After making some phone calls, she located them at a hotel, where the family had moved after wearing out their welcome with relatives. Williams arranged to meet the children at their grandmother’s.

Gutierrez and Williams spent 90 minutes standing on the sidewalk outside the house in the Texas sun, at arm’s length from the students, showing them how to sign into Google Classroom on their school-provided Chromebooks and helping their father figure out passwords.

The siblings logged on for the remainder of the school year. But then they went missing again, failing to show up for the district’s summer school program, which teachers had recommended for each of them. Now Williams and school staff are heading back out into the field, trying to relocate the siblings and other children who’ve gone missing and reengage them in learning this fall. With the siblings, they finally had some luck: The children showed up for school on September 29, the second day  CONTINUE READING: No participation in online learning could be detrimental

Blockchain Education, A Ticket To Digital Serfdom – Wrench in the Gears

Blockchain Education, A Ticket To Digital Serfdom – Wrench in the Gears

Blockchain Education, A Ticket To Digital Serfdom

What is blockchain?

Those in power will say:

Blockchain is a secure way for people to own and control their digital footprint, the data they create living through devices and wearable / implantable / ingestible technology in “smart” environments. In essence, it is a digital ledger that keeps track of EVERYTHING across a decentralized computer network that is said to be permanent and secure. Picture a real time account book that keeps track not only of your monetary assets (bitcoin – this is how much folks understand blockchain); but also civil records like birth certificates, marriage certificates, and court proceedings; voting records; property ownership; certifications and education credentials; health information, including DNA, bioinformatics, and data from wearable technologies; public benefit access like food stamps; and now even one’s movements (geolocation data) and social interactions via QR code health passports and contact tracing.

What I say:

Whether we know it or not, when we agree to have our lives linked to blockchain, we are agreeing to live in a behaviorist panopticon. In exchange for convenience and limited privileges, we give up our free will. The future being handed to us is one that will be shaped by surveillance, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, machine learning, and feedback loops. We risk swapping our vibrant human spirits, beautiful in their passionate creativity and flawed vulnerability, for sanitized digital twins that will be managed as human capital by callous technocrats to profit social impact investors. Before we walk through the door of digital identity, realize it opens onto a maze designed to disorient, confuse, and control us.

The reason it’s important to talk about this now is because states are setting up task forces on blockchain government. Illinois convened a blockchain working group in 2018. California issued Blockchain in California: A Road Map this July. An August webinar sponsored by the Rhode Island Israel Collaborative on their big-data Covid reopen partnership started with a discussion about the timeliness of moving to blockchain systems and digital governance. All of this is being spurred by the push to virtualize social interactions in response to the lockdowns we’ve experienced over the past six months. With this great rush to adopt emerging technologies, it is important to grasp the bigger picture.

The NAACP spent time considering the racial implications of this technology in 2019 and adopted a resolution that opposed linking blockchain identity to receiving any public service, including education. That resolution passed first in California and later at the July 2019 national meeting in Detroit. You can see the resolution CONTINUE READING: Blockchain Education, A Ticket To Digital Serfdom – Wrench in the Gears