Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ US EdTech deeply embedded in NZ school system with 'discounted prices, additional benefits'

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Taking a New Zealand perspective, this article explores "the gathering of students' personal information and what is done with it, the habituation of children to certain types of technology, and the big foreign firms' hold on the education market." I think that, when a country has enough money, adoption of Microsoft and Google software becomes automatic for national education systems. There's no need for procurement processes and review; who else is the system going to use? As in New Zealand, "When Google offered more discounted tech recently, 'the ministry did not consider alternative technology as most schools were already using Google', it said in an earlier OIA response in October." It's the same for me in my office (though I do my work in side projects mostly with open source technology, precisely because I think we should know where our data is, how it's being used, and that we can continue to access it in the future.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 30, 2024 05:19 a.m.

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