Technology is a for profit industry. Let's make no bones about it. Technology companies innovate for the sole purpose of gaining or maintaining an edge on their competition. With that in mind it is important to acknowledge that the recent focus of technology companies on the field of education is based on a premise of profit. While educators are reveling over the amazing transformations that technology has brought to the classroom and the industry of education, it is important to balance that enthusiasm with a cautious understanding of the motivation behind the innovation and avoid blind brand allegiance that has become an all too familiar phenomenon in mainstream culture.
The brand in particular that seems to be clearly winning the edtech race is Google. After Apple enjoyed a brief surge out of the gate it became clear that iPads, in addition to being significantly more expensive than Chromebooks, are not an ideal solution in a 1:1 classroom where multiple classes are accessing the same devices throughout the day. Additionally, Google has been extremely aggressive, focused, and effective in courting educators with innovative solutions that impact students, teachers, and district-level technology personnel.
One way that has happened is Google has allowed districts to free up resources by partnering with districts in creating Google Drive accounts for all teachers and students. In doing so, districts do not have to concern themselves with purchasing, updating, maintaining, and consistently expanding internal server space. Meanwhile, teachers and students gain all the benefits of accessibility, collaboration, publishing, and real time feedback associated with cloud computing.
In addition to alleviating much of the data management issues of districts, Google has done an admirable job in actively developing products and initiatives aimed at enhancing the teaching and learning experience. Google Apps for Education, Google Classroom and the Google Certified Teacher process are all examples of Google's outreach that is solidifying its brand as the go-to solution for the edtech community. If you need proof, simply search Twitter for #ChromeEdu or #GoogleEdu to see an endless stream of how teachers are enthusiastically embracing Google's suite of products, apps, and extensions in the classroom.
This is where the situation becomes sticky. Embracing Google wholeheartedly in the classroom should raise some ethical issues. First and foremost, Google is a company that survives and thrives on data. And let's face it, data is the new corporate currency. The primary reason "the cloud" exists is to facilitate the collection and manipulation of as much consumer data as possible, so that data can ultimately be sold or traded.
Consequently, Google uses data it receives through its "free" services in order to create accurately targeted advertising strategies for its paying clients which generate the vast majority of Google's revenue. Ultimately, Google's perceived altruism toward the education community is essentially providing the company a platform through which they can gain infinitely more data on a significantly expanded scale while convincing educators to voluntarily act as facilitators of indoctrination for increasingly younger and younger students.
Another area of concern is Google's intimate relationship with the NSA. Regardless of whether or not the relationship is based on legitimate and pressing national security concerns, should teachers in good conscience encourage or possibly even mandate students to populate a shared corporate and government database with personal thoughts and ideas before those students, and parents for that matter, have a chance to fully comprehend what is being done with that data?
Finally, the Google Certified Educator program, seems to be a bit disingenuous and self-serving on Google's part. In order to receive the certification, teachers pay to take and pass a series of tests (or have someone else pass the tests for them since there is no oversight in the testing process). The tests cover Gmail, Calendar, Sites, and Docs and Drive and teachers must pass each exam with an 80% or better.
Once a teacher passes all the exams, they receive a certification as well as the "privilege" of advertising for Google by placing Google's name on their blog, website, Twitter feed, resume, and wherever else the teacher deems appropriate. At that point, Google certified teachers that choose to market themselves as such, are voluntarily aligning themselves with a global corporation which directly profits from student data that the teachers are responsible for generating. Furthermore, many of those teachers seemingly become corporate mouthpieces that fill social media with unpaid advertisements as they tout the arrival of new Google products and updates in real time across a variety of social networking sites.
Google certification also opens up opportunities for teachers to advertise themselves as "Google Certified" so that they can pursue engagements presenting at conferences and provide professional development on Google products. While in and of itself the process seems relatively harmless, the potential for a conflict of interests arises when teachers seek independent personal gain by using their teaching methodologies, and student data and work samples, while leveraging the power of the Google brand.
Understanding that the process and concept of certification is fairly new and the promise of edtech is exciting for educators, I doubt there is harmful intent or malice on the part of teachers, but in the larger scope of things there seems to be a significant ethical gray area regarding the role students and parents might play in advocating for protections or even ownership of student work that exists in the cloud.
Yes, I am well aware of the irony inherent in this blog post, my attempts to promote it, and the platform on which I am publishing it. Therein lies the problem. For many of us, relationships have been established, technology has been paid for and implemented, and work is well underway. With that in mind, how do we now balance and even more importantly minimize personal and professional contradictions in a way that protects and honors the students we teach? And, how do we effectively prevent the public service of teaching from becoming a free advertising platform for corporations that, at the end of the day, are focused on improving profits, not people?
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A song with the sentiment: As a lover of music I get many ideas and much inspiration from the music around me. As a result, I aim to include a song or video with each blog post that echoes at least some of the ideas shared in that particular posting. This week's entry is the Ryan Lewis video for "Fake Empire". Enjoy!
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Thanks for reading. Please share your opinions, comments, stories, strategies, suggestions and well articulated criticisms. Follow me on Twitter @teachtothetruth or contact me via email at teachagainst@gmail.com
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