Students’ Right to Pedagogical Privacy
Facebook and Google have been the subject of prying eyes lately as concerns about their handling of users’ private information. Google’s Buzz, remember, broadcasted user contacts without consent. As learning goes virtual in NYC and around the world, it’s worth asking: is learning a private act?
To some extent, school is a very public space. Teachers address many students at once, students inevitably know each others’ grades, and reading aloud is as likely to reveal much about a reader’s fluency, or lack thereof. Still, when is learning private and when is privacy essential for learning?
It seems to me that there isn’t a straight answer to this question. That might make it even more important. What if we have this unspoken assumption that public and social learning is always a good thing? (Not much of a stretch, in my experience.) I think we might gain much insight from posing these kinds of questions to our students. How might they respond?
I blogged a few weeks ago about the return of super-lecturers. Though I meant it only half in jest, I now think that balancing the public kinds of learning with a new focus on private learning could give us greater insight into students’ learning habits.
Another side of the issue has to do with the kinds of information learning management systems gather about kids. Could students argue that software which tracks how long they take to answer a question a breech of their pedagogical privacy? What can online course providers learn from the missteps of Google and Facebook? That is, aside from “don’t get caught”!
