#audreywatters

We normalize the surveillance of children and children will grow up thinking surveillance is normal https://t.co/LajLiP7KBr

Pretty thrilled to announce that MIT University Press will publish my book, Teaching Machines. https://t.co/agrywUVb1X

When people ask me what ed-tech I like, i always point to the 70s: Sesame Street and Mr Rogers Neighborhood — *public* television, based in research, a respect for children, equity, and love.

Birthday selfie (w/new t-shirt from @FiddleNP) http://ift.tt/YC6ybH

Audrey Watters:

We have to ask more questions about the collection and analysis of student data that is feeding algorithms that promise “personalization.” What do technology companies actually mean by “personalization”? We have to consider if we are reducing students from people to profile — and we must ask these questions, knowing full well that education institutions have never really done a good job recognizing students as people.

How might the marketing promise surrounding “personalization” steer us away from self-direction and into pre-determined, pre-ordained pathways? Can we have “personalization” if it’s built on top of standardized of content?

If, as I said at the beginning of this talk, this is a great time to be a self-directed learner, how might technology be used to dull rather than empower learner agency?

What are the repercussions of competency-based and mastery-based learning? What are the repercussions of choice? What are the repercussions of distance? What are the repercussions of scaling? Who gains? Who gains from “choice” — how do we reconcile the individual’s needs, how the individual benefits — from society’s?

There’s a very powerful strain of American individualism — and California exceptionalism — that permeates technology: personal responsibility, self-management, autonomy. All that sounds great when you frame this — as I have repeatedly in this talk — in terms of self-directed learning. But how do we reconcile that individualism with the social and political and community development that schools are also supposed to support? How do we address these strains of individualism and libertarianism — anti-institutional, anti-governmental, and pro-“free market"? What do we do about the ways in which these ideologies are embedded deeply within many aspects digital technology in society?

I'm sure these questions are being considered in admin team meetings in schools across the country and the world.