Parents' Privacy Concerns Kill 'Personalized Learning' Initiative

theodp writes: "You may recall that inBloom is a data initiative that sought to personalize learning. GeekWire's Tricia Duryee now reports that inBloom, which was backed by $100 million from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others, is closing up shop after parents worried that its database technology was violating their children's privacy. According to NY Times coverage (reg.), the inBloom database tracked 400 different data fields about students — including family relationships ('foster parent' or 'father's significant other') and reasons for enrollment changes ('withdrawn due to illness' or 'leaving school as a victim of a serious violent incident') — that parents objected to, prompting some schools to recoil from the venture. In a statement, inBloom CEO Iwan Streichenberger said that personalized learning was still an emerging concept, and complained that the venture had been 'the subject of mischaracterizations and a lightning rod for misdirected criticism.' He added, 'It is a shame that the progress of this important innovation has been stalled because of generalized public concerns about data misuse, even though inBloom has world-class security and privacy protections that have raised the bar for school districts and the industry as a whole.' [Although it was still apparently vulnerable to Heartbleed.] Gates still has a couple of irons left in the data-driven personalized learning fire via his ties to Code.org, which seeks 7 years of participating K-12 students' data, and Khan Academy, which recently attracted scrutiny over its data-privacy policies."

Comments

Re:Bad...

[flyneye]

Spoken like a clueless teen, right down to the diction.In your case , you are probably right.
The rest of the world recalls what works and what doesnt. The newer ways, tailored to fit the convenience of teachers, board , the few liberal parents and now a data collection scam dressed as a Gates Charity, do not work, did not work and will not work. Bringing the focus back to the student, adopting the ways of schools from the 1930s to the 1950s and only updating newer facts for texts is going to be THE SOLUTION. Dont forget, eliminate unions and tenure, relax the need for teaching degrees and allow degrees from other fields to teach, then we will get somewhere besides the worst schools in the world.