Parents' Privacy Concerns Kill 'Personalized Learning' Initiative 93
theodp writes: "You may recall that inBloom is a data initiative that sought to personalize learning. GeekWire's Tricia Duryee now reports that inBloom, which was backed by $100 million from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others, is closing up shop after parents worried that its database technology was violating their children's privacy. According to NY Times coverage (reg.), the inBloom database tracked 400 different data fields about students — including family relationships ('foster parent' or 'father's significant other') and reasons for enrollment changes ('withdrawn due to illness' or 'leaving school as a victim of a serious violent incident') — that parents objected to, prompting some schools to recoil from the venture. In a statement, inBloom CEO Iwan Streichenberger said that personalized learning was still an emerging concept, and complained that the venture had been 'the subject of mischaracterizations and a lightning rod for misdirected criticism.' He added, 'It is a shame that the progress of this important innovation has been stalled because of generalized public concerns about data misuse, even though inBloom has world-class security and privacy protections that have raised the bar for school districts and the industry as a whole.' [Although it was still apparently vulnerable to Heartbleed.] Gates still has a couple of irons left in the data-driven personalized learning fire via his ties to Code.org, which seeks 7 years of participating K-12 students' data, and Khan Academy, which recently attracted scrutiny over its data-privacy policies."
Good to hear there are reasonable parents left... (Score:5, Interesting)
I already feared that every parent of today is on the "total surveillance" trip, teaching their children to kneel before their corporate overlords from their infancy.
But then again, maybe those parents were only concerned about the collecting of data associated with themselves, not their children...
Its easy to keep both (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't give them your data... have them give you the engine.
Then you feed the data into it locally, and it generates a customized learning profile which is anonymoized.
Then you anonymously download profile XJ2221LP4-123 whatever and then you get the best of both worlds.
Why are people so stupid... its so fucking easy.
Re:Good to hear there are reasonable parents left. (Score:3, Interesting)
I would also add that it is actually dirt simple for companies to assure "security" of this kind of personal data: all they have to do is not collect it in the first place.