Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Education Leaders Tackle Student Data Privacy Issues at Summit

Forthcoming federal guidance on the hot-button issues of student data privacy will seek "vigorous self-policing by commercial players," but the federal government is "not going to wait for industry or rely on promises" to protect children's sensitive information, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told privacy advocates and ed-tech industry leaders gathered here Monday.
That tension—between hoping the private sector will proactively develop and implement "best practices" on the one hand, and pushing for new legislation and regulations, on the other—dominated the "School Privacy Zone" Summit, convened by San Francisco-based nonprofitCommon Sense Media.
The event came in the midst of a recent flurry of student data privacy-related activity. In addition to the non-binding federal guidelines, expected to be made public Tuesday afternoon, a leading technology trade group released recommendations on the issue; major state legislation on the issue was proposed in California; and U.S. Senator Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who also spoke at Monday's school privacy summit, announced that he will soon introduce new federal legislation.
The confluence of efforts across sectors is a good sign, said James Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media, a group known for evaluating media and educational technology for use by children.
"I've never felt that industry self-regulations were sufficient to protect the interests of kids and families," Steyer said in an interview with Education Week. "We want the best [private] actors to step forward, but we also need legislation and regulation and advocacy. It's the combination that works."
'Police Yourselves Before Others Do'
In his keynote address at Monday's privacy summit, Secretary Duncan touted the "extraordinary learning opportunities" associated with new digital learning tools and the vast amounts of information they generate, citing examples of schools in Detroit, New York, Nashville, Tenn., and Huntsville, Ala. that are using technology and data to personalize student learning, free up teachers' time for high-value instructional activities, and engage parents.
But the secretary also stressed that "school systems owe families the highest standard of security and privacy," and he sharply criticized some industry practices, including "take it or leave it 'Click Wrap' agreements" with districts that allow companies to unilaterally and without notice change their privacy practices.
"It is in your interest to police yourselves before others do," Duncan said in a pointed message to ed-tech vendors. 
The federal guidance to be issued Tuesday will help school systems and educators interpret the law, and will "include examples of best practice," the secretary said. The technical assistance is largely the brainchild of Kathleen Styles, the U.S. Department of Education's recently appointed chief privacy officer.
One key principle around which there is an emerging cross-sector consensus is that educational data about students should be used solely for educational purposes—and not for targeted advertising.
Industry representatives and some education officials in attendance at Monday's event supported the general notion, but said much confusion remains about what "for educational use only" means in practice and expressed concerns about how such details will be enacted in policies and contracts.
"We want [vendors] to be able to use [student] data to improve their product. On the other hand, we don't want them selling it off randomly for profit," said Jeff Mao, the learning technology policy director in the Maine education deparatment.
Not Far Enough
Hoping to get out ahead of the rising tide of proposed bills in state legislatures around the country, the Software & Information Industry Association released on Monday its own list of best practices.
Mark Schneiderman, the group's senior director of education policy, said the recommendations were intended "to create a trust framework, and at the same time make sure [we're] not cutting off our nose to spite our face."
But privacy advocates said that the group's suggestions don't go nearly far enough. Joel Reidenberg, a Fordham law professor who recently authored a much-discussed study on the shortcomings of districts' contracts with cloud-computing service providers, criticized the SIIA proposal for not explicitly rejecting the use of educational data for targeted marketing, failing to include any guidelines for how long data should be stored or when it should be destroyed, and failing to include provisions for parents to access and amend their children's information, among other things.
Reidenberg was also critical of some state bills that have been proposed, saying they only addressed "the tip of the iceberg."
In their recent study, Reidenberg said, his team found that "school systems didn't understand what they were doing" when it came to entering agreements for cloud-computing services with private vendors, and as a result were systematically failing to notify parents about the use of web-based services to store children's sensitive information and unthinkingly "paying with students' privacy" for no-cost classroom apps and software.
Reidenberg, Khaliah Barnes, an attorney for the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, and others ticked off a list of concerns that continue to go largely unaddressed by legislation, regulations, industry practices, or district policies. Among them were the "vast amounts of data" collected by third-party vendors that don't fall under the jurisdiction of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA; the use of location data, biometric data, and social media to track students; the metadata generated by students' digital devices, especially when they are used outside of schools; and the growing trend of merging the "learning path" information generated by digital instructional materials with the personal data contained in student profiles.
Positive Examples
Not all the news at Monday's summit was bleak.
Among the educators to address the privacy summit was Superintendent Terry Grier of the 210,000-student Houston Independent School District, currently in the midst of a digital conversion that recently featured the distribution of 18,000 laptops to high school students.
Among the policies Grier highlighted were a one-step-at-a-time approach to deploying devices; a matrix used to evaluate the privacy protections offered by all ed-tech vendors seeking contracts with the district; and a teacher-led tech committee that vets any free apps and software that educators would like to use in their classrooms.
"Every day, we're thinking about things we haven't thought about before," he said.
Two big ideas also seemed to gain immediate and widespread traction among the heavy-hitters in the audience.
Many expressed enthusiasm for a suggestion that the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Education partner to set new parameters around data security and classroom apps, widely viewed as a major threat to students' privacy.
And the notion of "Good Housekeeping"-like seal of approval for ed-tech vendors who have met agreed-upon standards for protecting students' privacy was also popular.
"Market signals matter a lot," and such an effort may have an even greater impact than government regulations, said Jim Shelton, the acting deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Study Finds That Kindergarten is Too Easy

Kindergarten might be the new 1st grade but it is still too easy. A forthcoming study in the peer-refereed American Educational Research Journal finds that students make bigger gains in reading and math when they learn more advanced content such as adding numbers and matching letters to sounds. Yet kindergarten teachers spend nearly twice as much time on basics such as alphabet recognition and counting out loud. Study authors Amy Claessens,Mimi Engel and Chris Curran found that the majority of kindergartners already know how to do these things when they start school. 
 "If you teach kids what they already know, they're not going to learn as much," said Claessens, an assistant professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and the mother to a kindergartner. "I would go even further and say more time on basic  [content] is actually harmful to kids particularly in mathematics. In reading, it is neutral, but math is negative."
In a paper published last year in the peer-refereed Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Engel, Claessens and Maida A. Finch found that even students who started kindergarten lacking basic skills made bigger gains when teachers emphasized advanced material. The American Educational Research Journal findings add a wrinkle by suggesting that kindergarten students learn more when taught advanced content, regardless of whether they have attended preschool or come from low-income families. 
Academic Content, Student Learning, and the Persistence of Preschool Effects is based upon a large, nationally representative sample (ECLS-K) representing more than 15,000 students who started kindergarten in 1998-99. The article, which you can read in full for free for the next month, is the most frequently viewed piece on the American Educational Research Journal'website, even though it was just posted November 13th and has not yet appeared in print. (This is relatively rare since it often takes academic articles years to wend their way toward most-viewed status.) Claessens speculates that one reason that the findings have received so much attention is that they have some pretty interesting policy implications.
"Shifting what you're teaching is very cost effective," Claessens said.
Claessens notes that past research has found that schools have already ramped up the amount of time spent on spent on academic content in kindergarten. So if these research results hold, teachers could see a real difference by making a relatively small and inexpensive change that would not further subtract from the time kindergartners want and need for other important areas such as social emotional learning and physical education.
Like other researchers,  Claessens, Engel and Curran found that kindergarten teachers spend a lot more time on literacy than on math.  On average, teachers taught basic reading skills 18 days a month or nearly every school day and advanced literacy 11 days per month. By contrast, they spent ten days a month on basic math and six days on math that was more advanced. These results were the same for teachers serving bigger and smaller percentages of children from lower-income families.
 "Early-childhood and kindergarten teachers are not as confident about teaching early math and the way they should teach early math," Claessens said. "We have for a long time pushed and done a good job of focusing on reading and basic skills for reading. I don't think we know as much or are as confident about early-childhood math."
Claessens said she had shared her findings with her daughter's kindergarten teacher, who was already emphasizing more advanced skills. She has also presented her research to school district leadership teams.
How did they react?
"Not surprised but they're not quite sure how to change it."

courtesy : Education Week 

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

An appeal to our fellow citizen

Dear All , 

Any one who wants to join us as Volunteer , or help us in our cause to promote education to under privilege 

children in India , you may write to us : nikunjfoundation@gmail.com or send us a sms TYPE 

JOIN(SPACE)NF(SPACE) and send us to 7890011940

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

An Appeal to my reader or those who are following my blog

Dear All . 

Greeting from Nikunj Foundation .
We wish you all Happy New Year 2014 .

India is a nation of a billion dreams, a billion aspirations and above all great opportunities. To turn these dreams into reality, especially for the vulnerable sections of the society, Reliance Foundation has taken the path of inclusive development to address their basic needs. Nikunj Foundation is Mixed bunch of young & experienced Educators . All of them cater different schools in different capacities viz. as director , principal , head of departments etc . Nelson Mandela once said " “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” . As educator we believes if we want  , we can change the face of the nation by providing guidance to our young generation . Our Mission to educate India remains in our heart . Our organization under the leadership of Educationist from across the India launch the Program " Education For All " .

Statistical Facts which drives our Mission:
1 - India still home to largest illiterate population: UNESCO 2 - The literacy ratio of India is 65.38% with male literacy at 75.85% and female literacy   at 54.16%
3 - Of the 193 million Children in the age group 6 to 14 years, 8.1 million children are out of school as of Sept 2004 as per Government statistics.
4 - Net primary enrollment ratio in 2001/02 : 83 7%
5 - Children reaching grade 5 in 2000/01 : 59 8 %
6 - Many of the 8.3 million Indian children born with low birth weight will carry a burden of disadvantage with them into primary school.
We work with children in orphanages, slum and village community centers; educating and mentoring them for a better future, for both themselves and our country.

What We Need & What You Get

We want to  build up a school for these children so that they can access the better education . For that we need the following :
1 - fund for purchase of land where we build the school building .
2 - fund for construction of school building .
3 - Honorary salaries to educators .
4 - funds for Providing breakfast , lunch & dinner to children’s .
5 - funds for Electricity & Water tax.
For your contribution our students will send you a memento made by them .Believe us " they are not ordinary children , they are very very special children " lets us join our hands and help these children .
Your help will bring smiles to millions of children who actually deprived from Elementary Education .Your little contribution help the world to became a better place to live in for these children. 

To support our cause , please click on  the link :

http://gogetfunding.com/project/education-for-all-3