Archives for category: Technology
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

EdTech Envisioning Profits by Jumping into School Marketplace: “Don’t Call It Philanthropy”

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2017 //
20

While teachers continue to struggle for a decent middle-income salary, the edtech entrepreneurs are salivating about their success in the ed marketplace. Listen to the audio to hear the sound of happy money-makers.

Some people are getting very rich indeed by investing in technology to replace teachers and to call it “personalization.” When there is no teacher involved, it is “depersonalization.”

Here is the press release.

When Tom Davidson served as a state legislator for a small district in southern Maine two decades ago, he became intimately familiar with the byzantine, bureaucratic, and often, frankly, subpar sausage-making that goes into bankrolling education at a local level. (“There was never a shortage of good ideas, but almost always a shortage of money,” he says.)

So Davidson took his learnings to the private sector and founded EverFi, an education software startup, in 2008. As CEO, Davidson has been rallying some of the biggest names in business behind his cause. Indeed, on Wednesday, EverFi will announce that it has raised $190 million in new funding from a host of magnates to help bring schooling into the digital age. The company last raised $40 million a year ago, news Fortune covered first.

The round marks one of the largest deals to date in the area of education technology, also known as “ed tech.” It is exceeded in size by only two others: German publishing giant Bertelsmann’s $230 million stake in HotChalk, a firm that develops software for online graduate degree programs, and a $200 million fundraising by TutorGroup, an Alibaba-backed (BABA, -0.36%) startup that helps Chinese speakers learn English online. Both of those came in November 2015.

“We’re starting to see for the first time some scale in the space and the investments are reflective of that playing out,” Davidson said on a phone call.

In addition to catapulting EverFi into the ed tech big leagues, the fundraising round marks the debut deal for lead investor Rise, a newly established social impact investing fund managed by TPG Growth, a private equity firm that has also backed Internet hotshots like Uber and Airbnb. Rise contr

Other new investors included TPG Growth, which contributed $30 million, and L.A.-based MainStreet Advisors. The firms join existing investors Advance Publications, Rethink Impact, Allen & Co, as well as Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon (AMZN, +0.38%). Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet (GOOGL, +0.31%), and Evan Williams, cofounder of Twitter (TWTR, +10.78%), are investors in earlier rounds.

Nehal Raj, a partner at TPG who leads tech investments, said that EverFi’s business meshes well with the firm’s investment thesis, which involves homing in on an outdated process in a market featuring relatively few competitors. Education has traditionally been “done in a labor-intensive, inefficient way,” Raj said on a call, mentioning the paper-based products, in-person meetings, and binders filled with sign-in sheets and lists of checkboxes, that are its hallmarks.

EverFi “automates all that in a tech-centric way,” Raj added.

Based in Washington, D.C., EverFi has about 200 employees. The company sells software subscriptions to schools and businesses that help teach financial literacy (understanding mortgages and credit, for example), responsible college behavior (involving hazing and alcohol consumption), corporate compliance (like sexual harassment and diversity training), and other programs. Among the firm’s customers are Google, Oracle (ORCL, +0.56%), Whole Foods (WFM, +0.94%), and Airbnb, as well as universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford and 20,000 K-12 schools.

Another part of EverFi’s business involves striking partnerships with organizations that agree to license software on behalf of schools around the country. General Electric (GE, +0.05%), the NHL, the NFL, and Intel (INTC, +0.38%)have all done so.

To date EverFi has raised a total of $251 million including the latest round, its Series D. People familiar with the deal declined to comment on the firm’s private valuation, though one person familiar with the terms suggested that the company had not, at this stage, hit that oft-vaunted billion-dollar milestone.

Davidson said he plans to put money from the latest funding round into international expansion as well as possible acquisitions.

Rise, the lead backer, was cofounded by Bill McGlashan, managing partner of TPG Growth, along with Bono, frontman of U2 and well-known social activist, and Jeff Skoll, an early eBay (EBAY, -0.21%) exec, philanthropist, and film producer. Supplementing that trio, the fund’s board is stacked with philanthropic powerhouses who double as investors, such as Laurene Powell Jobs, Richard Branson, Reid Hoffman, Lynne Benioff, and Pierre Omidyar, to name a few.

Rise is set to announce Wednesday that it is adding three people to its education team as well. John Rogers, a veteran education, healthcare, and social impact investor, will lead the segment. Meanwhile, Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education under former President Barack Obama, and Rick Levin, CEO of Coursera and former longtime president of Yale University, are joining as senior advisors.

Though Rise has bright-eyed, do-gooder aims, it is far from a charity, in its backers’ view. The fund is expected to deliver social returns—helping underserved communities gain access to educational resources, for instance—along with financial ones, people involved in its management told Fortune.

Davidson said he spent considerable time walking the new set of investors through the fundamentals of EverFi’s business and technology. Bono, for instance, interrupted a few family dinners to go over aspects in granular detail, according to Davidson.

“It was super impressive how in the weeds he was in the deal and what we were building,” Davidson said. “He was hammering me with questions around Title IX school implementations.”

When Davidson’s wife would ask how much longer he might be, Davidson says he would inevitably reply, “I’m still on the phone with him. He’s asking about our rural Mississippi programs.”

Despite the interruptions, Davidson said he loved how involved the Irish rockstar had been in the process. “He is deadly serious about these issues,” he said about Bono. (You can read more about Bono’s business pursuits in this Fortune magazine profile from last year.)

EverFi will no doubt prove a bellwether for Rise’s investment strategy: an attempt to make money while achieving some social good. If the plan works, EverFi could also end up teaching the world a valuable economic lesson—that capitalism can strive for ideals beyond merely increasing shareholder value.

Just don’t call it philanthropy.

Categories For-Profit, Technology

Laura Chapman: Congress Votes to Eliminate Internet Privacy

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2017 //
14

Laura Chapman writes about breaking news:

“Pending a signature by Trump, Republicans have succeeded in making internet privacy a relic of the past. Last week the Senate passed a bill that will give internet service providers (ISPs) the automatic right to make a profit from every bit of data that you and your family, including children, place on your computer through an internet service provider such as Verizon, Comcast, AT&T Inc., or Charter Communications Inc.

“At around 3 pm today, (March, 28, 2017) House Representatives voted to kill legislation intended to enhance internet privacy.

“Moreover, the just-passed legislation makes it a “forever after” impossibility for the restoration of the Obama legislation or anything similar to it. Even if there is a massive breech of ISPs data (e.g., your SS number, credit card information, banking accounts and transactions, health records, your child’s school records and internet activity) the ISP is no longer obliged to notify you.

“House Republicans argued that breeches of privacy can be managed on a “case-by-case-basis.” In other words, the user of the ISP service hires a lawyer and hopes to get satisfaction through a court action. The House Republican argument also featured claims about regulatory overreach stifling innovation and boosting the economy. http://thehill.com/policy/technology/326145-house-votes-to-send-bill-undoing-obama-internet-privacy-rule-to-trumps-desk

“If you are a techie, you might think there is a work-around. This article casts some doubt on that. https://www.wired.com/2017/03/vpns-wont-save-congress-internet-privacy-giveaway/

“It is not clear to me how this bill intersects with The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)–the Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law is supposed to apply to all schools that receive funds under “an applicable program” of the US Department of Education. Since the USDE is being “deconstructed” and the edtech industry and its supporters want internet-based everything, I imagine that lobby will be thrilled with this legislation.

“Further, it is not yet clear how this bill intersects with the privacy and security standards for medical information provided in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), now under the leadership of longstanding Republican Thomas E. Price, M.D.

“I listened to the House Republicans and Democrats go back and forth about the bill. None mentioned the ripple effects across other federal agencies.

“Some internet gurus think that the bill also has major implications for national security, making theft and marketing of ISP data lucrative.

“The purpose of this bill was to enable ISPs to seek profits from their data. ISPs operate as monopolies in many regions. They gather your clicks, record your dwell times and all other data that gets you access to the other “retail” tier of the internet—Google, Bing, and specific websites, The ISP lobby wanted the gravy train of profits enjoyed by the “retailers.”

Categories Education Reform, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Republicans, Technology

Leonie Haimsom: After the Confirmation, What’s Next?

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2017 //
21

Leonie a Haimson, leader of Class Size Matter and board member of the Network for Public Education, reviews the drama of the last week and looks ahead.

“So it happened as predicted; Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote for Betsy Devos this afternoon.
Though disappointing it was in its way historic: the only time in US history that a Cabinet secretary needed the vote of the Vice President to be approved.

“The last few weeks have been historic in another way: Never have parents, teachers and concerned citizens been so outraged and activated over an education official or issue. Never have so many called, rallied, protested, faxed and written letters to their Senators, in an “avalanche” that nearly flattened Capitol Hill, overwhelming and shocking Senators of both parties….

“We need to sustain the activism and involvement we exercised in this battle and keep speaking out loudly and firmly to let education policymakers at the federal, state and local levels know that we will not stand idly by while our public schools are defunded, dismantled and privatized.

“One issue little noticed by the media: it was widely recognized how avid Betsy DeVos has been to allow for-profit charters and vouchers to draw funds from the public schools. What was little noticed is her devotion to online learning and questionable ed tech solutions. These will just as surely divert resources from the proven strategies that provide students with the support and human feedback they need. It was reported that the one financial company she refused to divest from is Neurocore that runs “brain performance centers” via biofeedback to treat autism and attention deficit disorder with no evidence of efficacy.

“In 2015, while speaking at SXSW Edu, that annual Kumbaya gathering of the technology tribe, DeVos sounded exactly like Bill Gates:

It’s a battle of Industrial Age versus the Digital Age. It’s the Model T versus the Tesla. It’s old factory model versus the new Internet model. It’s the Luddites versus the future. We must open up the education industry — and let’s not kid ourselves that it isn’t an industry — we must open it up to entrepreneurs and innovators.

This is how families without means will get access to a world-class education. This is how a student who’s not learning in their current model can find an individualized learning environment that will meet their needs.
We are the beneficiaries of start-ups, ventures, and innovation in every other area of life, but we don’t have that in education because it’s a closed system, a closed industry, a closed market. It’s a monopoly, a dead end. And the best and brightest innovators and risk-takers steer way clear of it. As long as education remains a closed system, we will never see the education equivalents of Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Wikipedia or Uber. We won’t see any real innovation that benefits more than a handful of students.”

“Surely, we will need all your activism in the battles to come – whether it be against the expansion of charters, the use of tuition tax credits or vouchers, or wasteful ed tech scams — all of which would divert precious resources from our public schools. Now that we’ve woken up our elected officials to the fact that parents and teachers and citizens fiercely love their public schools, and will do nearly anything to preserve, protect and support them, we must continue to speak out.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, For-Profit, Online Learning, Privatization, Technology

Hackers Called “Anonymous” Warn Donald Trump

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2017 //
13

The hackers’ collective called “Anonymous” sent a series of tweets to Donald Trump warning that they have damaging information about him and plan to release it.

 

This is a dangerous world we live in.

 

Hacking should be illegal. It is theft. It should not have been done to the DNC or John Podesta and should not be done to Trump.

 

Trump invited the Russian government to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. He should not have. Now he is at risk.

Categories Technology, Trump

China Runs Camps for Youth Addicted to Internet, Vows to End Electric Shock Therapy

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2017 //
28

 

China has vowed to end the use of electroshock therapy at the special camps it runs for those who are addicted to the Internet.

 

“HONG KONG — At the Addiction Treatment Center in eastern China, more than 6,000 internet addicts — most of them teenagers — not only had their web access taken away, they were also treated with electroshock therapy.

 

“The center, in Shandong Province, made headlines in September after one of its patients killed her mother in retribution for abuse she had purportedly suffered at the camp during a forced detox regimen.

 

“Now China is trying to regulate camps like the one in Shandong, which have become a last resort for parents exasperated by their child’s habit of playing online games for hours on end.

 

“The government has drafted a law that would crack down on the camps’ worst excesses, including electroshock and other “physical punishments.” Medical specialists welcomed the law, announced this week in China’s state-controlled news media, as an initial step toward curbing scandals in the industry.”

 

Well, I for one hope that such camps are never introduced in the U.S., as I might be among the first to be sent there. If there is a Twitter Addiction Camp, I won’t be there, but the President-elect would be.

 

Categories Technology

The Chinese Obedience Game

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2017 //
12

Leonie Haimson, leader of Class Size Matters and Student Privacy Matters, gathered the following links to an important story: China has developed a credit score game that rates its citizens by their behavior.

 

She writes:

 

“Check out this video and news articles about Sesame Credit, the big data social credit score and game being used in China to encourage obedience to the government — to be mandatory for all citizens by 2020. Very scary stuff!”

 

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-terrifying-look-at-future.html

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-has-made-obedience-to-the-state-a-game-a6783841.html

Categories Data and Data Mining, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology

The Growing Dominance of Online Assessments and the Dangers They Pose

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2016 //
39

 

 

In this article, posted on Valerie Strauss’s blog, Lis Guisbond of FairTest interviews New York opt out leader Jeanette Deutermann about the creeping incursion of online assessment into regular classroom use. i remember hearing New York ‘s Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia predict the advent of “embedded assessments,” in which students would be continually assessed, as they complete their assignments online. No need for a “test.” The testing would be daily, continual, and invisible.

 

Guisbond writes:

 

 

Long Island parent Jeanette Deutermann is only half-joking when she says she should give a Christmas gift to her son’s school computer this year instead of the teacher. She sees the way computer-based curriculum-plus-testing packages have taken control of her son’s classroom, and she doesn’t like it.

 

Deutermann has been a leader in New York State’s unprecedented opt-out movement. Now she is calling out the latest damaging twist in education reformers’ efforts to fatten the pig by weighing it even more often.

 

Deutermann’s fifth-grade son and his classmates are among those on the edge of this craze, now that their school has adopted a product called i-Ready. She’s alarmed that her son gets daily computer-based math and reading lessons triggered by the results of a computer-based test. He also has thrice yearly (or more) i-Ready exams and even i-Ready-based homework.
She laments a shift away from students learning how to communicate and collaborate with one another on group projects to more and more time in solitary communion with a computer screen…

 

We already know that high-stakes exams narrow and dumb down instruction, depress student engagement, and produce inaccurate indicators of learning. Now we must be vigilant and prepared to push back against these new threats:
The push for frequent online or computer-based testing threatens to reverse recent progress in reducing testing and lower the stakes attached.
*Instead of schools with trained educators who use their professional expertise to personalize learning for students, these programs perpetuate standardized, test-driven teaching and learning, now automated for “efficiency.”
*Frequent online student assessments require teachers to review copious amounts of data instead of teaching, observing and relating to students.
*In truly student-centered learning, children guided by teachers can choose among topics, materials and books based on their interests and passions. But the vision promoted by many education technology vendors and proponents is of students learning material selected by online or computer-based adaptive assessments.
*Companies and government agencies are amassing unprecedented amounts of student data through online learning and testing platforms. There is widespread concern about accessibility of this data to third parties and violations of privacy through data. Parent groups and others advocate legislation to provide transparency and protect data from misuse. In the meantime, security breaches or data sharing are serious risks.
*Frequent online testing creates obstacles to opting out as a way to call attention to and protest testing overkill. A robust national opt-out movement created enormous pressure for change. But a shift to online exams creates new hurdles for parents who want to opt their children out.
*After several decades, researchers have seen little positive impact from educational technology. Meanwhile, researchers warn of a range of negative consequences from overexposure to technology and screen time. These include damage to intellectual, physical and emotional development, threats to privacy, and, ironically, increased standardization.

 

 

Categories Standardized Testing, Technology

Bill Fitzgerald Explains Why He Signed neveragain.tech

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2016 //
5

We are all aware that our personal data are being collected, stored, sold, and used every time we log on to a computer. Yet it never ceases to surprise when we learn this again. Bill Fitzgerald is a teacher, administrator, and technology director. He signed a petition called neveragain.tech. He explains why in this post.

 

Here is his conclusion:

 

Third party tracking is pervasive on the web. This technology creates marked and growing information asymmetry, where the odds are increasingly stacked against people, and stacked for corporations. Technology fuels this power imbalance, and technologists build the tools that make it possible.

 

The day before the leading technologists in our country shuffled into Trump Tower, news broke of 200 million records for sale on the dark web containing information that appears to come from a data broker. The records identify individuals, and include details like spending habits, political contributions, political leaning, credit rating, charitable contributions, travel habits, and information on gambling habits/tendencies. These records were certainly assembled and stored via different tracking technologies.

 

With this as a backdrop, when I see something like neveragain.tech I will admit a degree of skepticism. The profiling tools are built, and the data sets are assembled, multiple times over. I also want to make explicitly clear that my signature, or lack of signature, on the list is pretty unimportant in the larger scheme of things. But with all that said – and with all the technology that has been built, and is right now humming along, collecting data, serving bad search results, and tracking us – we can still make things better. Hell, we might even be able to make things right.

 

With regard to privacy, people often use two metaphors to describe why the efforts to increase privacy protections are meaningless: “the genie is out of the bottle” and “the train has left the station.” What people using these metaphors fail to recognize is that the stories end with the genie returning to the bottle, and the train pulling into another station. “Too late” is the language of the lazy or the overwhelmed. Change starts with awareness, and change grows with organized voices. That’s something I can get behind, and is the reason I signed neveragain.tech.

Categories Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology, Trump

A Petition by Members of the Technology Industry: Never Again!

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2016 //
17

This is an astonishing petition, created and disseminated within the technology industry, to protest the use of technology to carry out abhorrent policies against Muslim Americans, immigrants, and others who displease the incoming Trump administration. Please read the statement to see the links, recommended readings, and organizations. Some might say that it is too late, that the information is already collected, but it is nonetheless heartening to see so many sign this statement protesting the use of technology to invade privacy and violate human and civil rights.

 

Our pledge

 

We, the undersigned, are employees of tech organizations and companies based in the United States. We are engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people. We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies. We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.

 

We have educated ourselves on the history of threats like these, and on the roles that technology and technologists played in carrying them out. We see how IBM collaborated to digitize and streamline the Holocaust, contributing to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others. We recall the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. We recognize that mass deportations precipitated the very atrocity the word genocide was created to describe: the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey. We acknowledge that genocides are not merely a relic of the distant past—among others, Tutsi Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims have been victims in our lifetimes.

 

Today we stand together to say: not on our watch, and never again.

 

We commit to the following actions:

 

We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin.
We will advocate within our organizations:
to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting.
to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data.
to responsibly destroy high-risk datasets and backups.
to implement security and privacy best practices, in particular, for end-to-end encryption to be the default wherever possible.
to demand appropriate legal process should the government request that we turn over user data collected by our organization, even in small amounts.
If we discover misuse of data that we consider illegal or unethical in our organizations:
We will work with our colleagues and leaders to correct it.
If we cannot stop these practices, we will exercise our rights and responsibilities to speak out publicly and engage in responsible whistleblowing without endangering users.
If we have the authority to do so, we will use all available legal defenses to stop these practices.
If we do not have such authority, and our organizations force us to engage in such misuse, we will resign from our positions rather than comply.
We will raise awareness and ask critical questions about the responsible and fair use of data and algorithms beyond our organization and our industry.

Categories Civil Rights, Technology, Trump

Big Data and the New Police State

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2016 //
55

Many of us have wondered about the practice of measuring, rating and ranking every student, every teacher, every school. We know that Big Data is insatiable.

China is perfecting Big Data.


“Imagine a world where an authoritarian government monitors everything you do, amasses huge amounts of data on almost every interaction you make, and awards you a single score that measures how “trustworthy” you are. 


“In this world, anything from defaulting on a loan to criticizing the ruling party, from running a red light to failing to care for your parents properly, could cause you to lose points. 
And in this world, your score becomes the ultimate truth of who you are — determining whether you can borrow money, get your children into the best schools or travel abroad; whether you get a room in a fancy hotel, a seat in a top restaurant — or even just get a date.


“This is not the dystopian superstate of Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” in which all-knowing police stop crime before it happens. But it could be China by 2020.
It is the scenario contained in China’s ambitious plans to develop a far-reaching social credit system, a plan that the Communist Party hopes will build a culture of “sincerity” and a “harmonious socialist society” where “keeping trust is glorious.”

Big Data has valuable uses for macro-trends in society. Big Data is dangerous when it scoops up personally identifiable data.

Categories Accountability, Data and Data Mining, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »