Opinion: Teachers, parents and children should have a say in the role of technology in schools and on the types of data it collects and why
By Eamon Costello and Rob Lowney, Dublin City University
There is much concern about children and smartphones, but less attention is paid to the growing role of other technologies in schools and the data they collect on our children. Irish parents will be familiar with getting school reports, homework instructions or other notifications through apps like Aladdin, VSWare or Microsoft Teams. They may be grateful for this welcome alternative to deciphering the note crumpled at the bottom of a school bag or to coaxing tidbits of information from a non-talkative tween.
During the day in school, their child may have taken a quiz via an app such as Kahoot or Quizlet on a device such as a Chromebook, laptop or iPad with the results displayed on an interactive whiteboard by the teacher. These kinds of digital tools can make learning fun and provide teachers with real-time diagnostic information on students' performance and levels of comprehension, allowing them to tailor and differentiate lessons for a class. With this technology, however, schools now collect and store ever-increasing amounts of data on children. We may well ask: who owns this data, and what happens to it?
The collection of personal data is regulated by laws such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and, more recently, the EU AI Act. The GDPR aims to provide fairness and transparency around what data is collected on people and why. It emphasises consent, fairness, transparency and warns against collecting more data than is needed for a given purpose.
It was for violations of GDPR that Google Chromebooks were effectively banned from schools in Denmark in 2022. The issue was highlighted when a parent noticed his 8-year-old uploading videos to a Youtube account which had been automatically created by his school-issued Chromebook. Google (through parent company Alphabet) design their Chromebook devices to integrate well with other services they own such as Gmail, Drive, Docs and Youtube. Google was quick to fix the initial most egregious data breach, but the wider subsequent legal case continued until July 2024, when an agreement was reached between Google and Local Government Denmark (Kommunernes Landsforening).
The issue remains, however, that many technologies in our schools are developed by companies that operate powerful global brands that are phenomenally successful at selling products and services to consumers and businesses. Many of the technologies used in schools were not specifically designed for educational purposes but have been adapted from more general-purpose office productivity tools and consumer offerings.
While technology kept the lights on during the emergency remote teaching of the pandemic, it also allowed big tech to greatly increase its digital footprint in schools. This has been termed the "platformisation" of education, referring to how systems such as MS Teams or Google Classroom become embedded in schools and how such tools can explicitly or subtly direct and shape forms of teaching and learning. Research reports from the Digital Futures Commission in the UK and Human Rights Watch levelled sharp criticisms of tech companies during the pandemic.
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From RTÉ News, MTU says IT breach caused by ransomware attack
Even when data is collected ethically, responsibly and proportionately, things can still go wrong. Universities have first-hand experience of some of the dangers posed to education in our increasingly datafied society. Irish higher education institutions have contended with several large-scale cyberattacks and ransomware operations that halted campus operations. High-profile incidents reported in the media include those at the National College of Ireland, Technological University Dublin, Munster Technological University, and the South East Technological University.
Schools in the U.S. have faced numerous major cyberattacks, such as the 2020 attack on the Miami-Dade public school system or a Ryuk ransomware attack on Baltimore County schools. In 2021, a breach exposed over 1 million New York City Students' names, dates of birth, ethnicities, academic records and enrollments. The Los Angeles Unified Schools district is still suffering the effects of a 2022 breach. Students themselves, rather than professional hackers, were suspected in an apparent hack of the Class Charts app at Billingham's Northfield school in the UK, leading to calls for more oversight of these types of technologies in schools. Ireland has gotten away lightly so far, though Mount Temple School in Clontarf suffered a recent data breach where confidential evaluations of students were inadvertently shared via Google Classroom.
From Associated Press, Los Angeles school district hit by cyberattack
As the market for technology in schools grows, new products and services are offered. Citing concerns over mental health and school shootings, software services sold to US schools are now collecting highly sensitive data by monitoring students’ communications on school-issued devices. Commentators warn that these services being sold to schools have no proven effectiveness and collect massive amounts of data on children’s most private conversations, including topics such as sex and sexuality. Questions arise as to who has access to this data, what is the point of collecting it and how securely it is being stored.
Digital technology is now a fact of life. You are reading these words on a screen, and they were typed on a digital device. We need to prepare children for this world but also protect them from it. Research conducted at Dublin City University with students studying to be teachers has led to promising interventions that help teachers learn more about the role of data in education. Results indicate that teachers can develop increased awareness of the impact of data collection and storage and its wider impacts, which technologies learners should trust and why. The conversation needs to be a wider one, however, between many stakeholders. Teachers and parents should have a say in the role of technology in schools and on the types of data it collects and why. And so should children - it is their data, after all.
Dr Eamon Costello is an Associate professor of Digital Learning at Dublin City University and president of the Irish Learning Technology Association. Dr Rob Lowney is Senior Learning Technologist in the Teaching Enhancement Unit at Dublin City University.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
