I'm daily confronted with the problem of trying to help some student get their homework off the cloud using school computers. Those things are heavily filtered understand, so there is a lot of normal seeming stuff that just doesn't work at school, the other universe. The reason commonly given by IT for why students can't use google+ to transfer their files is that Google data mines. I find this rather ironic coming from the school district.
It seems to me that the district pays millions to for-profit companies for the service of data generating assessment tools, more commonly known as standardized tests. The district is paying good money for data that is no better than what Google would gather for free while providing a more useful service than what we are forced to buy because of Federal restrictions for content management systems bearing allegedly confidential information. What it really is is exclusive information. Isn't that where the real value is in data? Or are we supposed to buy the notion that having the data can really help us improve the achievement of the students in our charge?
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