Data mining your children

[unrepentant progress]

The NSA 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. ... Students are tracked as they play online games, watch videos, read books, take quizzes and run laps in physical education. The monitoring continues as they work on assignments from home, with companies logging children’s locations, homework schedules, Web browsing habits and, of course, their academic progress.

Long, but necessary reading: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=5262F339-E833-4C1F-A9F7-8A0F20BC2F13

Beyond the creepiness, beyond the selling of the data collected, beyond ALEC promoting this kind of blanket surveillance of our kids for profit in state legislatures, remains the infuriating fact that at best there is no evidence for the data being used to effectively improve educational outcomes. At worst, it's odious pseudoscience in the name of profits.

"Even more intimate tracking may be possible in the future: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded a $1.4 million research project in 2012 to outfit middle-school students with biometric sensors designed to detect how they responded on an a subconscious level to each minute of each lesson."

Schools might as well be buying million dollar dowsing rods. Having your kid take a 25 question quiz on dividing fractions will give you a good idea of how well she can divide fractions. This though is just recording noise. The companies involved will be able to find any spurious correlation they like. When you record everything, you measure nothing.

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. If I had kids/grandkids in the current school system, I would be furious.

I don't, and I won't, luckily.
The pattern is so evident, however...they are turning kids and their parents into consumer robots who can be used for profit and then tossed aside.