Slashdot Mirror
The Big Biz of Spying On Little Kids
theodp writes: "'The NSA,' writes POLITICO's Stephanie Simon in her eye-opening Data Mining Your Children, 'has nothing on the ed tech startup known as Knewton. The data analytics firm has peered into the brains of more than 4 million students across the country. By monitoring every mouse click, every keystroke, every split-second hesitation as children work through digital textbooks, Knewton is able to find out not just what individual kids know, but how they think. It can tell who has trouble focusing on science before lunch — and who will struggle with fractions next Thursday.' Simon adds, 'Even as Congress moves to rein in the National Security Agency, private-sector data mining has galloped forward — perhaps nowhere faster than in education. Both Republicans and Democrats have embraced the practice. And the Obama administration has encouraged it, even relaxing federal privacy law to allow school districts to share student data more widely.'"
It should be.
...is the new 42.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
I hear the navy wants intelligent robots. Poor kids.
That's why I home school.
This is fine if the parents agree to it. (Do they?) And as long as it is anonymized and not sold to Coke.
Finally, applying science to learning at a more detailed level. What works, what is crap, what is overkill.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The bigger bonus to this is that it teaches children that constant surveillance is OK and expected.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
We really need a third party - I'm sick of both of the Republicans and Democrats. They both suck!!
The bigger bonus to this is that it teaches children that constant surveillance is OK and expected.
To be honest I think doing this to children is a lot better than doing it to adults. I mean, adults are doing nothing about it, but children will quickly learn that they are under surveillance at all times and will take extreme measures to counter it. I don't know of any child who isn't an expert on defeating their parents control techniques, whatever they are.
And the Obama administration has encouraged it, even relaxing federal privacy law to allow school districts to share student data more widely.
What. The. Hell?!?!
How can the President unilaterally change laws?
I thought LAWS were passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, then signed by the President.
Silly me.
When these kids grow up, most of them will be totally used to it and many more will accept government paternalism without complaint "for their own good". Many will likely even feel lost without "father" or "big brother" watching them and telling them what they are doing wrong.
This is obviously an exaggeration, but the point is the same. If a student is working on an assignment, she is always observed to make sure for on task behavior, or to make sure the process is correct. The computer is no different. One problem with computer as a educator is that many students don't really know how to use it as tool. They only know how to use it as game. It is the difference between a pencil as a tool to complete a worksheet, or a pencil as toy to throw or use to play sword fighting. Both are legitimate uses of a pencil, in the proper circumstances, and kids need to be taught to use it as the former for typical educational purposes.
So depending on how the data is used the age of the student, it is perfectly reasonable, even beneficial, for software to be monitoring the students behavior. The act of monitoring, just like in the classroom, can positively effect the students behavior. Likewise, constantly monitoring the use and effectiveness of the material is called formative assessment, which is not only beneficial but also required if you are going to give a student the unique educational experience that everyone seems to be clamoring for.
So this is not necessarily like Disney tracking every move of the six year old children. If this is a legitimate educational service, and they violate the privacy of students, even if the students are over 13 years old(and Disney is free to do whatever they want with 13 year old children), they are in violation of federal laws protecting the privacy of students. This does not mean they cannot collect data, it just means they are limited in how they can use it, and who can see it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This is a disgusting application of this technology, a continuance of the "big data" fallacy.
More data is only helpful if you know how to analyze & factor it into a theory that allows for prediction.
This data only serves to give beuarcrats & incompetent middle managers some "number" abstraction to "hit" so they can justify their existence.
Gates is doing this too...these people should not be allows anywhere **near children**
Thank you Dave Raggett
of why school board elections are important. don't let this happen in your jurisdiction.
I mean, adults are doing nothing about it, but children will quickly learn that they are under surveillance at all times and will take extreme measures to counter it.
No, it sounds like this is the kind of surveillance that is building a secret "permanent record", with data sold to marketing or coming into play many years later when those children start thinking about politics.
Problem solved.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Just like it happened in North Korea, Eastern Germany and the Soviet Union.
The only choice you have to avoid it is unplug or counterintelligence, feed the wire-tappers false info! I'm sure that will be illegal at some point too... I guess it's open season for spying on congress and CEOs. Say goodbye to the world as you know it! Hello super-corruption. It's the culmination of all things we shed blood over in the twentieth century, think about it. Like having J. Edgar Hover amplified 6 orders of magnitude mixed with the hell of east-Berlin and corrupted African dictatorships all rolled into one... Yippee!
I see your point, but I doubt that the children are as aware of the surveillance, if they've even been told about it at all, as their adult parents; I don't think that they have the presence of mind about these issues to have their view of "privacy rights" impacted, any more than having every aspect of their lives controlled by an unelected ruler makes them all warm and snugly about autocracies.
Interesting, as 2/3s of those have fallen...
This is fine if the parents agree to it. (Do they?)
I would bet real money that the parents were never told about it. Just like the parents were never told about school administration perverts watching their daughters through their school issued notebook's webcam. [[http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/21/2010213/pa-school-defends-web-cam-spying-as-security-measure-denies-misuse]].
I'd say it's a step up from the dumb humans they got now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They'll find out eventually, and like it or not, their perception of surveillance like this will be affected by how normalized it is in our culture.
There's also another problem: Children won't have any choice. Unlike in other cases, children don't really have a choice of which school to attend, so this surveillance is even more intolerable.
My hope is that it teaches kids that they're being spied on, that kids don't like that and that they develop strategies to subvert and nullify it. Just like they did with their parents' attempts to keep them from sneaking out to go to that concert for decades.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Odd that we learn from the losers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's.... a really long concert.
Some people say if you were at Woodstock, you never really returned from it... dude...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's how I interpret this.
Humans, for all their faults and flaws, have an amazing degree of adaptability, especially when they don't have a baseline for comparison of their circumstances. If you raise a child in a bad situation, and that's all they really know, then they adapt to that situation; it becomes 'normal' to them, and they'll actually become uncomfortable if you try to 'improve' their situation, actually seeking the conditions they're adapted to. That's what these corporations and the government are doing here: They're raising an entire new generation under total surveillance, while at the same time so-called 'social media' is teaching them that 'sharing is right and good, privacy is wrong and only bad people with something to hide want that!'. The result will likely be an entire generation of adults who not only think being watched and monitored everywhere they go and in every thing they do is OK, but will get uncomfortable and even downright insecure if they detect that they're not being watched, surveilled, and monitored 24/7/365. If the current generation of adults in this country, regardless of whether they have school-age children or not, don't protest and fight back against these practices, then I fear greatly for the future of this country.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Some people say if you were at Woodstock, you never really returned from it... dude...
On the other hand if you remember being at Woodstock you probably weren't there.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I doubt that. Kids learn to escape their parents to go to a concert is that the concert is right there. Escaping their parents has an immediate, obviously visible, effect.
The type of surveillance described above is a lot more insidious, with respect to children. They're being surveilled for data mining. The kids aren't going to notice any obvious effects of the surveillance--it's not as if being surveilled means that the teacher will catch them saying naughty words and punish them. Any effect on them they either won't recognize (like buying more of some toy because marketing can target them better) or will be so far in the future and about such different things that they won't know about it (such as 20 years later someone deanonymizing the data and refusing to hire the guy because people who use lots of adjectives in childhood are statistically more likely to steal).
No, even if it is anonymized, this is a big "do not want". You must assume that this data will make its way into the hands of Coke, Apple, the banks, and government entities.
These guys are quickly figuring out how the human brain works through methods like this, and they aren't using it for your benefit. It's being used to figure out how to sell you more crap, how to convince you to get others to buy more crap, and how to adjust your thinking patterns.
I find it amazing how well people are programmed through today's media. Even here on slashdot you have so many "individuals" who parrot media talking points to a tee, that it's unlikely they came to those conclusions on their own.
The human mind is simply another machine. Once they figure out what thought categories you fall into, they know what code path to feed you to influence you in their direction. This idea won't sit well with most folks, because they think they're too smart to fall for that, but I see it time and again with otherwise brilliant people who are suckered in by the agendas of others. I see it happen to myself as well, and it's scary.
There is no way I want my kids to be providing data for the enemy.
Actually at least one has tried. A guy down in Nevada tried to find out what kind of info they're collecting on his kid.
The silly bastards want to charge him $10,000 for the info. Supposedly it'll take 3 weeks of programming time to get the data out.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Big brother wants their souls.
The trend in education seems to be to create utilitarian, functional drones who are technically able to perform tasks (even complex ones like software development) but are devoid of any ability to think or create. The fact that society sees this as a good thing is frightening. The idea of a liberal education which causes growth and ability to think seems to be something of the past. It's like we're in a new industrial revolution. Schools used to turn out clock-disciplined people for factories, who had basic functional literacy and math skills. Now schools turn out drones who can functionally perform tasks, even higher-level ones, but are devoid of any spark of life.
Yeah, because children all over the world naturally resists brainwashing and grow up to be perfectly resourceful and independent individuals.
Nice fiction you got there..
Seriously. They're not. They don't have the same rights as adults, nor should they. They're not fully developed human beings. We don't let them drive, for instance. It's not just because they're too short to reach the petals, you know? It's also because they're ability to make complex judgements isn't as fully formed.
Sure, we have to draw the line somewhere, but it's a complex topic of where to draw the line. And a knee jerk reaction of "Because Freedom!" isn't the way to make that decision. See here for reasons why data mining kids is a _good_ thing.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
children will quickly learn that they are under surveillance at all times and will take extreme measures to counter it.
No, they will get used to the idea that always being under Big Brother's watchful eyes is normal. You think all this fascist stuff would have worked had they tried it half a century ago? Massive surveillance, monitoring everyone's conversations without an warrant, secret courts, imprisoning innocent men for years without a judgement, spying on kids for fucks sake... not even Stalinist USSR was that bad. People would've been really pissed off and heads would roll, possibly literally. Instead, the way they do it is by baby steps. They push it just a little further every day. A few years down the road they have the perfect (for them, anyway) surveillance state and nobody bats an eye.
Be seeing you.
It's worse than that, because relationships are built on trust. When I grew up, my parents let me out, and I did bad things, but I learnt from those experiences and now considered myself a valued member of society. I knew that I was being trusted to make the right choices (even though I didn't most of the time), but by going down the path of failure making mistakes I learnt more than I could ever from reading a text book. I'm wondering if kids never have that chance to make mistakes then their development will suffer, as will the whole of society's around them. This new era of surveillance is creating an environment where developing minds don't have the freedom to experiment and fail. Which is one of the most important steps in development.
and not sold to Coke.
Wouldn't education be even better if Coke subsidized it and passed the savings on to me?
You complain about the failing of schools, yet you give them less than 1/2 the dollars per pupil compared to private schools (which still aren't perfect) to accomplish the same task. The reason for all the tracking and testing is to try and optimize the educational system. You want personalized lesson plans so each student can learn at his or her own pace and in a manner which is best suited to him or her, while putting in $1/hour/pupil in human oversight and guidance? Good fucking luck! Put in $20/hr and you're on the right track, but I don't think property taxes of 20% are feasible.
There is no way to optimize learning except by observing how and why a child learns in real time, and adjusting the curriculum to match. Computers can do this now, but they need some sort of basis for their algorithm. That comes from data.
If you want it fixed, you should require anonymization of data (i.e. tokens), forbid the use of data for any fiscal gain outside of the task at hand, and hold every person in the corporate chain personally and criminally liable for breaches. Or do the same and keep the data and programs in-house, but that would mean either every district with it's own custom software (=$$$$) or a nationwide project to create the software - and we know how well the Feds are at that kind of thing.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
hey some interesting info
you said this:
I have to respectfully beg to differ on this...no, we *dont* have the ability to do this...not even close
computers will never be able to do as you say, it's too complex of behavior
Thank you Dave Raggett
Data mining is another reason for teachers to be very wary of Pearson's products.
Truth, and scientifically proven. Failure is a necessity of a mentally stable and secure individual.
Probably read this on another slashdot article but,
With all this surveillance, people are behaving for the "performance" (ala ballet) as opposed to behaving because they're human.
Surveillance in this fashion is mind control, ala the "performance", as well as in the opposite direction with all the metadata. Surveillance in and of itself is a butterfly effect.
This is a timely article. My school is getting ready to tap into the ipad's for every student to save on books bandwagon. I need to find out more about their data privacy policy.
Cheap storage VM.
The problem isn't that they'll figure it out. The problem is they will think they've figured it out and convince others, like lie detectors.
Cheap storage VM.
By monitoring every mouse click, every keystroke, every split-second hesitation as children work
What kind of world are we building for ourselves and our children and grand-children? A world where everything is caputred and analized. I wish I could leave this fucking plant you people are crazy.