📑 Comments on ClassDojo controversy

Bookmarked Comments on ClassDojo controversy (code acts in education)

The educational app ClassDojo has been the target of articles in several British newspapers. The Times reported on data privacy risks raised by the offshoring of UK student data to the US company–a story The Daily Mail re-reported. The Guardian then focused on ClassDojo promoting competition in classrooms. All three pieces have generated a stream of public comments. At the current time, there are 56 comments on the Mail piece, 78 at The Times, and 162 on The Guardian. I’ve been researching and writing about ClassDojo for a couple of years, on and off, and was asked some questions by The Times and The Guardian. So the content of the articles and the comments and tweets about them raise issues and questions worth their own commentary–a response to key points of controversy that also speak to wider issues  with the current expansion of educational technology across public education, policy and practice. ClassDojo has also now released its own response and reaffirmation of its privacy policy.

Ben Williamson addresses a number of questions leveled at Class Dojo, especially in light of the current concern around data. One of the points that he makes that really stuck out was the notion of ‘sensitive data’. Often this is defined by privacy, however as Williamson explains the collection of data over time actually has the potential to turn the seemingly arbitrary into sensitive data.

ClassDojo has been dealing with privacy concerns since its inception, and it has well-rehearsed responses. Its reply to The Times was: ‘No part of our mission requires the collection of sensitive information, so we don’t collect any. … We don’t ask for or receive any other information [such as] gender, no email, no phone number, no home address.’ But this possibly misses the point. The ‘sensitive information’ contained in ClassDojo is the behavioural record built up from teachers tapping reward points into the app.

Williamson does however close with a warning, that with GDPR coming in, ‘data danger’ is quickly becoming its own genre:

The risks of ‘data-danger’ for children reported in the articles about ClassDojo doubtless need to be viewed through the wider lens of media interest in social media data misuses following the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal. This presents opportunities and challenges. It’s an opportunity to raise awareness and perhaps prompt efforts to tighten up student privacy and data protection, where necessary, as GDPR comes into force. ClassDojo’s response to the controversy raised by the press confirmed it was working on GDPR compliance and would update its privacy policy accordingly. Certainly 2018 is shaping up as a year of public awareness about uses and misuses of personal data. It’s a challenge too, though, as media coverage tends to stir up overblown fears that risk obscuring the reality, and that may then easily be dismissed as paranoid conspiracy theorizing. It’s important to approach ed-tech apps like ClassDojo–and all the rest–cautiously and critically, but to be careful not to get swept up in media-enhanced public outrage.

4 responses on “📑 Comments on ClassDojo controversy”

  1. Ben, I wonder how we can have a meaningful conversation about data, without it becoming cliched or hysterical, a point that you close with. I have been reflecting on this lately, concerned that there is a divided developing. Does it start with critical self-reflection or is this not enough? Is it more systemic, at a GDPR level? Still working through your book (for a second time). So many questions.

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