Educational technology (EdTech) is everywhere in schools and universities. Students take online exams under the watch of student monitoring software; security cameras follow students in the hallways of their schools; learning management systems shape and track students’ learning. But despite EdTech’s popularity, it is often not clear that the tools serve actual educational needs—and it is sometimes clear that EdTech actually hurts students. We introduce principles to help you push your school or university take a more critical attitude to using EdTech.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
1. Preventing police cooption
Student data should be used for educational purposes and be kept safe from the police.
2. Establish educational need
Schools should only adopt EdTech that serves clearly identified educational goals.
3. Equity
Schools should reject EdTech that helps law enforcement target BIPOC students, low-income students, immigrants, and other overpoliced groups
4. Community engagement
EdTech should only be acquired with support from parents, students, and teachers.
5. Transparency
Schools should publicly report what EdTech tools they acquire and how student data is used.
6. Third-party reviews, audits, and grievance processes
Schools should only acquire and keep EdTech that is independently proven to work and not to harm students.
7. Wholistic budgeting
EdTech budgeting should account for the teacher time needed to use tools as well as related training costs.
8. Data minimization
EdTech tools should stop capturing more data than needed to serve their educational goals.
9. Equitable privacy protection
Schools should set privacy policies for EdTech that are strong enough to protect all students, including those who may be targeted by law enforcement.
10. Expanded EdTech oversight
EdTech requires a detailed oversight plan, identifying who makes decisions and how they make decisions.
