Bits | The Business of Technology - November 17, 2014: Privacy Concerns Over Classroom Tracking Software.

Monday, November 17, 2014

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Morning Report Privacy Concerns Over Classroom Tracking Software | One morning in mid-October, Greg Fletcher walked to the front of a third-grade classroom at Hunter Elementary School, where an interactive white board displayed ClassDojo, a behavior-tracking app that lets teachers award points or subtract them based on a student's conduct. On the board was a virtual classroom showing each student's name, a cartoon avatar and the student's scores so far that week, Natasha Singer reports. "I'm going to have to take a point for no math homework," Mr. Fletcher said to a blond boy in a striped shirt and then clicked on the boy's avatar, a googly-eyed green monster, subtracting a point. ClassDojo is used by at least one teacher in roughly one out of three schools in the United States, according to its developer. The app is among the innovations to emerge from the estimated $7.9 billion education software market aimed at students from prekindergarten through high school. Although there are similar behavior-tracking programs, they are not as popular as ClassDojo. Many teachers say the app helps them automate the task of recording classroom conduct, as well as allowing them to communicate directly with parents. But some parents, teachers and privacy law scholars say ClassDojo, along with other unproven technologies that record sensitive information about students, is being adopted without sufficiently considering the ramifications for data privacy and fairness, like where and how the data might eventually be used. Read more »

+ While some educators praise ClassDojo's game-like set-up, others say its carrot-and-stick method of classroom management is outmoded and could be detrimental to the self-esteem of certain students.

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