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Reasonably Accurate 馃馃 Transcript
Good morning everyone. How's it going today? Uh In this episode, episode 67 which is crazy enough and hard to believe. Um as it is, I want to talk about an article that came across um my feed uh this morning uh from CBC Radio for the Spark program and they were looking at the use of G suite in schools within Canada.
Um Now, this is most provinces um have uh some percentage of deployment of Google. Um It's the predominant um technology used um in primary schools within Canada. Um and that speaks, you know, well to the ease of use of the suite.
Um but also some of the economics behind it and um just to lay the groundwork. So the Spark article um did a really good job about um covering, you know, every which uh uh aspect of the issue. Um And the general question was, you know, is this a good thing to have um G Suite Google so deeply integrated into the um mechanisms and the workflows of our schools.
And they touched on some key points that I want to reiterate here because I think it's a really interesting case study So the economics are clear, education is always struggling for funding. Um They are also struggling for time and for resources. The G suite proposal is pretty straightforward and it's pretty attractive.
Um It is a set of web based software. So Google Docs, um gmail, hangout video chat, and a number of custom applications for teachers to help manage class work assignments that are all normally delivered through chromebooks. Now, chromebooks um themselves are a really interesting device for educational it because they're essentially disposable, right?
Um You can log in, you can have any student log into any device and near instantaneously, they're set up in their own customized work environment. So you've got this ability to move the devices among students very easily, which is very attractive. Um There's no data that's locked into a specific device.
So if there is a damage or a hardware issue, um that one can be simply retired and a new one can be brought in while that original one is being fixed or whatever the case may be. So there's very easy um way to keep things up and running, which is critical because it staff um are normally at the board level, not at the school level.
Um So everybody sort of wins, right? Um But the challenge here in the uh you know, brought up in the spark article was an immediately user privacy. What about the kids privacy? Are we data mining them? Are we tracking them early on.
Well, yes and no is the answer. And this is where the story really gets interesting, which is why I wanted to bring it up today. Um So first of all, let me get the, the elephant in the room. There's a, a lawyer quoted in the article and I absolutely vehemently oppose this person's point of view.
Uh where basically on the issue of data being stored in another country, you don't have to worry about it because that data is not of interest to um national assets, like to the FBI in the States. That's the wrong way to approach privacy.
Privacy is not about, hey, I don't have anything to hide. So I shouldn't have to hide anything. Privacy is a human right? Privacy within an it world doesn't mean you need to assume that your data is of interest and therefore, if it's not of interest, you're not under threat or you don't need to keep your data private, it should be private by default.
So let's get that out of the way private by default. And for Canadians, normally, that means under Canadian law and that's where things get challenging with respect to Google is that they can't guarantee the data will be kept here in Canada or at least we're not sure because all of the agreements with the school boards and with the Ministries of Education are normally under ND A which means the public can't get at them, which is a problem with this issue in general.
But the real core of this, all this stuff, you know, um the benefits outweigh a lot of these concerns. But the real crux of the spark article and what I want to talk about, um in this episode, um is this idea of informed consent and informed usage.
Um And the challenge here is that it's not at all informed when it comes to school boards. So every parent has sent home a letter at the beginning of a year, um that basically sums up and says, you know, this is you need to talk to your kids about the appropriate use of technology.
Um And a lot of that comes the appropriate use of these G suite accounts. Um So, you know, you won't be searching for inappropriate things, you won't, you know, bully other students. Um you'll behave as if you would in the real world kind of thing.
The challenge there is that you're also not aware of the context in which the um technology is going to be used. So as a parent that gets really difficult to have that proper conversation, but if we take that a step further, we know that school boards are stressed for resources, training is at a minimum.
Um It's very difficult G suite is extremely powerful. Um And you can easily configure things to be public when they should be private. I've seen this personally a number of times um with school boards um uh happening by accident, of course, but the teachers and the educational staff need to be trained up on this stuff just because you think, oh, it's just Google, everybody knows how to use it.
Well, that's part of the impact on the users. So the users are the students and as the students are minors, their parents are being asked to consent to the use of this technology with the assumption that it will be used safely and securely.
But that's not the case because of the complexity and the lack of training resources. You can see how this issue starts to really get quick, uh complicated, very, very quickly and to make that even harder. What a lot of um educators don't realize what a lot of it folks don't realize what a lot of citizens don't realize is that while the Google for Education um user agreement says that they won't mind the data accounts, um they won't track the accounts and mine them for privacy.
Not every service under the Google Empire falls under that license. The big glaring exception here is youtube, youtube does not fall under that license. So when you're using youtube in the in the classroom, when you're embedding, those in G Suite docs, that usage is still tracked and it may not be associated directly to a child, but it is associated to a certain age group because they know it's coming from school.
Um And then it's this whole question of, is there a shadow profile set up? So, while I'm within my educational account, I'm protected by the educational ya and a certain set of permissions. Um, when I go out to noneducational services, does that still hold true?
Am I still tracked? Uh, am I tracked as a shadow account or? So, am I tracked as a random user? There's a ton of questions here. I don't have any answers. I wish I did. Um But I think this is a glaring and unfortunately, um you know, it involves Children.
So it's a very concerning example of the fact that consent and informed usage of technology is extremely difficult. Privacy is extremely difficult. You can see the economic advantages for the school boards. You can see the upside managing chromebooks as sort of random uh systems for students to log into.
That's a great operational model. They've really reduced the cost there. Um And of course, economic benefit to Google and its partners is short term sales of chromebook, long term users invested in the ecosystem. So the economics there, there's a trade off like schools get manageable, it, Google gets long term users.
Um Android chromebook manufacturers get an upside immediately. So that's a win, win, win and that's a good thing. Um The larger question of, you know, how do you have that discussion? Not only with the students, but how do you have the discussion and the training with the teachers to ensure that privacy is enabled by default.
Um as opposed to just a lip service, that's a really complicated issue and there's a number of parallels um with corporate it, with security in general. I don't know what the wrap up here is. This is an issue that I'm passionate about.
This is an issue that I'm going to dive into deeper. I'll tweet out the link um for the CBC spark article and I'll put it in the comments below. Um What do you think? How do you think that, you know, there's this question of the specifically Google in education.
There's a larger question of, you know, complex consent and understanding of configurations for user privacy and community privacy and child privacy. Um Hit me up online at marknca um in the comments down below or always by email me@markn.ca.
Um I think this one's really, really needs a discussion. There is one started on linkedin and I'll, I'll link out to that as well. Um It's complicated. That's really my sum up for today. I hope you guys are set up for a fantastic Wednesday.
Um I look forward to talking to you online and see you on the show tomorrow.
