Matthew Williams

As learning increasingly moves toward the digital landscape, the role of data is also coming under more scrutiny. Every time a student browses the Internet or uses an app for learning, trace data is created, and thus the potential to use it for the benefit of that student.

A slew of companies and products offer the promise of collecting data to help educators, but there are still major concerns about how that data will be used, including issues around student privacy and teacher evaluations.

Reynol Junco, faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is studying the role of data in education, and says the potential for using learning analytics for students’ benefit is far from being realized. Using data as formative assessment — providing feedback to students in incremental steps rather than with big tests like mid-terms or finals — can be helpful to both students and teachers, he says.

“I think of learning analytics as the ultimate formative assessment. We’re always talking in education about how formative assessments are very important. It’s important to assess frequently and to make adjustments,” he said recently on NPR’s Tell Me More. “We’ve got data well before a student will flunk a first exam or a quiz and so we can make some predictions about the things that they’re doing and how we might intervene before we get to that point.

Junco sees potential for trace data to further individualize learning, or at the very least help educators understand how their students use the Internet.“It’s collecting large amounts of data to identify patterns that will help tailor education more precisely for each child,” Junco said. “Some of my research has already shown that we can use things like how much time students spend on Facebook and what they do on Facebook to predict academic outcomes,” Junco said. In that study [PDF] he learned that students who use Facebook in class to socialize have lower GPAs.

[RELATED READING: What Does Your School Know About You?]

But Junco also understands the dark side of data. When it comes to small kids using mobile apps to play games, Junco believes data collection for the purposes of companies tracking children’s locations and activities goes too far.

“Such tracking builds profiles of children (their likes, dislikes, browsing habits, etc.) for insidious forms of marketing,” he wrote in response to the December report, Mobile Apps for Kids, by the Federal Trade Commission about the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requirements.

That report found that 59 percent of the 400 apps reviewed some infromation from the user’s mobile device back to the developer or to a third party. And only 20 percent of apps disclosed information about how they collect data.

Flickr:Pixelsrzen

In the digital age, kids need to have an understanding of what it means to be a responsible digital citizen. They need to learn the technical how-to’s, as well as a more global comprehension of how to navigate the online world. To that end, Melbourne educator Jenny Luca made a commitment to help her students start blogging and to create ePortfolios. Here are six reasons why, at her school, these skills are now a high priority.

By Jenny Luca

• CREATING POSITIVE DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS. Kids need to start establishing a positive digital impression of themselves. Without question, it will be the norm for these students to be Googled when they begin to look for jobs — even if it’s part time. As young as they are, they need to cultivate their personal brand, and they can do this by posting about what they’re involved in at school, learning in their classrooms, or other co-curricular activities they enjoy. We want our students to understand that they can control the message about themselves on the Web, and that they can point prospective employers, colleagues or university admissions officers.

• COMMUNICATING WITH DIGITAL TOOLS. We want our students to have a handle on how to use digital tools to communicate, and not just through networks like Facebook. Plenty of our students are Facebook users, but there is a higher order skill set required to maintain consistent posts on a blog. We’ve taught our students how to set up categories, add widgets, use the HTML editor to embed code, and how to tell the difference between a legitimate comment and a spammer. As our world moves ever closer towards the Internet as the main vehicle for communication, we feel that we are helping our students understand the language they will need to navigate this new territory.

• TRANSPARENCY FOR PARENTS AND FAMILY. Our curriculum is becoming more transparent to parents. As our students write more about what they’re learning, we now have a means for their parents to feel more connected to what happens at school. Where once a child would write for an audience of one – the teacher – now they are writing for a potentially much larger audience that includes their immediate and extended family. Students will not only have a digital archive of their learning, but will see comments from friends and family that they can revisit in years to come. Their access won’t be limited to the box of cherished school records and mementos relegated to the attic. For these kids, an Internet connection will enable them to revisit their childhood and adolescent school years.
• NEW WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT WEB TOOLS. We need a digital space to demonstrate new methods of learning how to use important Web tools. Already this year, our student ePortfolios have been used to embed Slideshare and Google Docs presentations, Glogsters, podcasts created with Garageband, Google MyMaps, Prezi, and links to Wiki pages they have edited for different subjects. Just having our students understand how to hyperlink to other people’s content, and the potential this opens for two-way conversation, has been eye-opening for them. These spaces have helped provide even more reasons for our teaching staff to use Web-based tools and teach themselves new skills in the process.
• EFFECTIVE DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP. By creating ePortfolios, or a digital collection of their work, our students learn how to conduct themselves in digital spaces in the context of their curriculum, not just in isolated lecture-style presentations that may strike a chord with some students, but miss the mark with others. When I talk to my seventh-grade students, they can clearly articulate why we’re using these ePortfolios. It makes sense to them, and they know it is important for their future lives.
• PRIDE IN THEIR WORK. For many of our students, their world view is changing as a result of posting in public spaces. Many of them have embedded clustr maps into their sidebars, and they can see where people are visiting from. Recently, one of our students posted about the effect this global audience has had on her: “Okay- so is this is amazing. I’ve used this blog since March 30th and so far it’s been a great resource and an amazing display of some of my work this year. It hasn’t just been my teachers, my classmates, my family and I that have looked at it — as of August 6 my blog has had 533 visits worldwide. Amazing or what? WOW.”

Wow indeed.

 Jenny Luca contributes to PLP’s group blog Voices from the Learning Revolution.