Education technology has been around for decades. However, its use in the classroom has grown significantly in recent years, mainly due to the pandemic. Given this surge of edtech tools, leaders must understand these technologies are still in their infancy—so proceed with caution.
That’s according to a new report from Internet Safety Labs, an independent product safety testing lab, which details the latest snapshot of K12 technology used in more than 650 schools across the country representing more than 450,000 students. Simply put, there’s room for improvement when it comes to districts’ safeguards and privacy protections surrounding their edtech tools.
Here are some of the report’s key findings that may shed some light on how schools are handling these new technologies.
Edtech practices in schools
According to the report, schools fail to systematically provide technology notice and consent, which may be a gray area.
“While notice and consent is a mainstay in most privacy law, there is no requirement for edtech in schools,” the report reads. Additionally, only 45% of schools offer a technology notice that transparently lists all the technology used by their students.
As far as parental and student consent goes, a mere 14% of schools gave parents and students age 18 or older the ability to content to technology use. Some schools may also be “over-applying” the ability to consent on behalf of the students.
“ISL is not a legal expert, but in our opinion, LEAs cannot adequately consent on behalf of students for technologies with which the school has no actual relationship, and for which students can independently sign up for accounts or for use without an account,” the report declares.
Most notably, the majority of schools aren’t carefully assessing all the technology used by students. Only 29% of schools reported vetting every edtech tool, the researchers found. Additionally, schools with technology vetting “had no difference at all in safety scores.” Here’s some additional data surrounding this issue:
- Schools with technology vetting were “somewhat less likely” to have ads in apps.
- Schools with technology vetting had worse school composite scores than those without vetting.
- Schools with technology vetting recommend and/or required 27.6% more apps on average than schools without any observed vetting.
- “Technology vetting may be providing a false sense of security,” according to the report.
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Recommendations
As the data suggests, there’s still work to be done in terms of how schools administer and manage their edtech tools. Using this data, ISL provided four recommendations for education leaders to consider in the future:
- Be transparent and provide an easily accessible list of all the tools students will use for school while making it clear which ones are optional vs. mandatory.
- Give students and parents the ability to consent to mandatory technology.
- Only provide consent on behalf of the student for technologies that the school itself has a relationship with.
- Adopt a systematic safety vetting practice for all tools the school requires or recommends.
