Cybersecurity is a multifaceted and complex issue, particularly in today’s world where a significant portion of our time, information, and lives are tied to digital devices, both for personal and professional purposes. It is increasingly crucial to possess a basic understanding and knowledge of securing one’s devices and managing digital security. For schools, the stakes are particularly high, and developing a solid cybersecurity plan is a critical aspect of managing the risks associated with digital devices in this day and age.
Recently, Dan Taylor, the host of the #internationalschoolpodcast, and I, the co-host, had an opportunity to discuss cybersecurity in schools, with a particular emphasis on international schools. Both of us have a keen interest in this subject, and Dan has been actively supporting international schools with Google Education Workspace’s robust security tools and processes. He has a genuine passion for this topic and has been doing a lot of work in this area. Meanwhile, I have facilitated workshops for parents, created videos and educator sessions, and worked with groups that provide one-on-one support and workshops to seniors focused on navigating digital ecosystems and devices.
In our discussion, Dan prepared an excellent slide presentation for the ECIS Leadership Conference, which he used to facilitate workshops for school leaders. We took the opportunity to share our perspectives and experiences, offering tips and strategies for school leaders to consider. Podcast version also available here
Over the last weeks ChatGPT and Natural Language Models of Artificial Intelligence have created a real buzz for many in the technology industry and general media. For schools the arrival of these have generated important reflections and introspection on the role of AI, Chatbots and Natural Language Models in schools and the classroom. ChatGPT bringing on important moments to think about the role #AI in a classroom- schools. How does this refocus and challenge educators pedagogy, which can often in schools be focused on teaching content -knowledge with assessments designed around tests and exams.
We as educators and schools need to invite ourselves to ask what then is the value added proposition of learning in a classroom and school in the age of #AI #ChatGPT3. How do schools position themselves for a future with #AI. We all need to create the space, time, and support community voices to engage with this creative tension. To find the time and space, and hear these voices, will only allow us to be better prepared for such cohabitation.
Over the years working in different international schools as an IT Director, Director eLearning, Head of Education and Media Technology and Deputy Principal I have had the opportunity to lead, design and collaborate with Leadership Teams and IT Teams the implementation and adoption of digital ecosystems and environments. These experiences have been an important point of reference in my own learning and understanding on the complexities, challenges and opportunities of leading technology change in a international school setting.
I had the privilege to be able to collaborate and co-write this eGuide with Adam Morris who is Schools Technology & Integrations Director @ FariaOne Group. A special thank you goes out to the Managebac team who provided us with support and guidance throughout the process. As the group worked and collaborated together on the eGuide Adam and I had the opportunity to each reference our own professional experiences working, coaching and supporting schools around the world with leading technology change.
The guide is a a point of reference to support conversations, reflections and how to engage with technology change with a whole school approach. It is there to provide provocations, points of reference on change and the workflows and dispositions to consider as one engages in a technology change process with a whole school approach https://guide.fariaedu.com/leading-technology-
Over the last 18 months, our time spent online has simply increased to levels maybe not experienced prior to the pandemic. As we continue to juggle the complexity and nuisance of the pandemic, this also maybe is an opportunity for schools to re-explore their relationship to digital citizenship. The growing erosion of our privacy as well as our amplified cohabitation with Artificial Intelligence (AI) present us with new challenges.
We all have become so much more aware of being tracked 24/7 with digital ecosystem grids which are seamless and frictionless parts of our daily routines. In (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism), Shoshana Zuboff describes this process of tracking “behavior surplus. Behavior surplus is the personal data that we leave on our devices and give away daily based on a mutual agreement (user agreements) between the digital companies and us. These agreements (when is the last time you read a user agreement?) give permission for our behaviors online/offline to be tracked, collected, monitored and analyzed by companies and in some cases governments at will. The purpose of “surveillance capitalism” is to leverage this “behavior surplus” to mitigate the uncertainty of our desires and to better predict what we will do. This is then turned into a profitable commodity. The value of our “behavior surplus” is unprecedented and the raw material of human data is fueling the engines of innovation, economics, politics and power.
Over the past few years, and in some ways accelerated even more in the last 18 months, AI has a growing impact on our lives, more often than we realize. Daily, it seems we develop a growing dependency on this cohabitation with AI: be it our GPS, HomeAssistant, iRobot vacuum cleaner, Health Device, Dating Apps, SmartWatch, or SmartTV. For our students, this seamless integration of AI into our lives often comes as a frictionless change. Tik Tok is a great example of this – a social media platform with sophisticated AI and unprecedented tracking algorithms, which in a short time added 1 billion users. Overnight, Tik Tok become a teen favorite and serious competition to Snapchat and Instagram. For many educators, new digital consumables are embraced with hesitancy but somehow often the convenience is enticing enough for us to succumb to the charm of the “smart” and “wifi“ ready products.
I have worked with groups of educators and students to build a series of lessons around ARTE’s Do Not Track in order to highlight the complexity and intricacies of how we are tracked. The different episodes are thoughtfully constructed with interactive components breaking down the erosion of privacy. I am surprised how often a percentage of students confidently express their indifference with this erosion of privacy and its implications. In some ways this makes sense. If the current privacy landscape is the sole point of reference, the current state of privacy is interpreted as normal. In comparison, educators interacting with ARTE’s Do Not Track respond with far more anxious discomfort as for many this erosion is compared to experiences where individuals felt greater control over their privacy. As we re-explore digital citizenship, we need to take these varying perspectives into consideration.
The fact is that most of our students are highly proficient digital consumers and not digital natives. The same goes for many educators in general. If we think of our own interactions with digital environments, it’s very likely that most of our time is focused on consumption over creation.
We need to consider re-framing how we support educators and students in a school setting away from a sole focus on digital citizenship to a broader focus on digital fluency. This requires us to develop an approach where the focus is on developing purposeful connections to our digital ecosystems with the goal of becoming ethical digital creators of content.
The concept and idea behind digital fluency is built on the work of the DQ Institute and its DQ Framework and the 8 digital intelligences. Digital fluency is facilitating an approach where learning opportunities are constructed around the natural connections of our day to day lives with these 8 digital intelligences. The important aspect of this focus is not excluding other essential learning in the curriculum. To make this meaningful, digital fluency needs to have clear connection points to personal experience, ensure these connection points are purposeful, and build on the learning already taking place in a school’s curriculum and the different learning pathways of the units of learning.
Grade 6 responses to survey on what 8 digital intelligence they would like to focus on ranking them 1-8
The above graph is one sample of several surveys done with Grade 5- 6 students asking them what areas of the DQ Framework they would like to learn and focus on. Interestingly, there was a clear pattern across several groups for Digital Safety as the highest priority (from the DQ Competencies.)
An important aspect of this is allowing student voice to actively guide the design of these digital fluency connections. They are identifying valuable needs and ensuring this open communication is key to making this shift meaningful to them.
Here are some examples of what digital fluency could look like, and what some schools are already actively creating. One example is giving high school students a LinkedIn account and spending time supporting what it means to have a public profile and how to curate a positive digital footprint compared to a personal social media footprint. Other schools are creating blended courses for parents on how to understand the difference between the pedagogic use of digital devices in schools and the challenges of a more open ended environment of digital device use outside of school in the home. Another example is having students develop public service announcements regarding malware and then coaching younger students on how to identify phishing emails and how to manage an antivirus app. Another is walking through the architecture of effective password creation and developing sustainable strategies to ensure a solid level of security in the students personal lives as a podcast. Or having students coach their parents through the privacy and security settings of their favorite app and create a how-to help screencast.
It is through these activities that participants build on a set of dispositions, skills and knowledge where they feel a sense of autonomy in addressing the complexities, challenges and opportunities of the digital ecosystems we are so intimately connected to.
The new year, 2022, at our doorstep will be even more intrinsically connected to cohabitation with AI and a continued dilution of the autonomy we have with our privacy. Scaffolding digital fluency as an essential part of the learning pathways provides a guide for students to shift their energies away from being passive digital consumers to active digital creators. Digital fluency provides a mindset to better understand the importance of the ethical responsibilities of digital creation and the implications of the digital ecosystems which permeate our lives, both visible and invisible. Ignoring this will just amplify a society of passive digital consumers, while eroding our free will.
Glaucia Rosas co-founder and Director of the https://edutecalliance.com/ invited me to sit down and share some reflections on her podcast about Educational Technology, Online Learning and juggling General Data Protection in a School setting.
With the unprecedented experience of COVID19 that we all have juggled over the last months, and the complexities we all are living with today, our days have been intense. As part of the Pearl of Wisdom protocol of the Principal Training Center, I, as a trainer at the PTC reflected on my own experience as an education leader working and facilitating with digital literacy and fluency in an international school setting and navigating the dynamics of the COVID19 pandemic. A 20 minute share out.
On May 25th 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into full swing in the European Union as law, focused on individual privacy and access/use of personal information of European Union citizens. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new set of rules governing the privacy and security of personal data laid down by the European Commission which impacts all European Union’s (EU) organization both commercial and non commercial (non-profit) and foreign companies and organizations which handle European Union citizens personal data. The objective of bringing this regulation into law across the EU is in reaction to significant changes with the digitization of information and the growing power of algorithms used by large corporations in analysing and using personal data for commercial use. The General Data Protection Regulation has been designed to give a greater level of control to EU citizens over how their data is processed and used by companies and organizations.
For European International Schools GDPR is an important regulation that schools are working to become complaint. The GDPR requires European International Schools to ensure that all schoolwide processes, producers, and policies with personal data of staff, faculty, parents and students are complaint with the GDPR regulation.
Local government authorities enforcing the GDPR could potentially give out fines if organization do not comply to the GDPR.
There are three areas that European International Schools have to focus on for the GDPR :Governance ⅓, Data Protection ⅓ and Cyber Security ⅓. Schools need to show that they are working toward compliance in all three areas and ensure that any personal data they process is handled and stored securely. The focus is on mitigating the risk of personal data not being properly safeguarded. The GDPR extends to those organizations, companies, and services which European International Schools use for different services or resources in and outside of school Under the GDPR schools will be responsible to ensure these organization which might be accessing community members personal data are complaint with GDPR.
There is no doubt this new regulation brings about a lot work forEuropean International Schools as they review, and analysis their current status and enhance procedures, process and policies to be compliant with the GDPR.
This summer as many European International Schools realized the importance of this new regulation and in tandem understanding the extensive work needed to be done the International School of Brussels created a GDPR International Schools working group in an effort to share expertise and resource. In this GDPR working group over 45+ European International Schools are currently sharing and collaborating both virtually and in person. There have been two meetings hosted by the International School of Brussels on their campus in Brussels this fall and spring. 45+ European International Schools came together with representatives from school Leadership teams, IT Departments, and Administrators to work to support each other. In tandem the Brussels GDPR International Schools working group has been supported by 9ine consulting https://www.9ine.uk.com/ who are working with quite a few European International schools as consultants/experts on GDPR compliance in a school setting.
It is evident that working towards General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is very time consuming workflow, and the process requires whole school communities to consider enhancing or implementing new process, procedures and policies related to personal data used on and off campus. This workflow is requiring schools to look at all the daily process and procedures we often take for granted where personal data is being used, access and shared. One actually does not realize the magnitude of ways we work with school community members personal data in and out of school. This process is bringing this to light for many schools.
Below are good resources to support a further understanding of the GDPR
GDPR International Schools work group (a Google group started by the International School of Brussels)
As the first days of 2018 arrive, any reflections on last year seem to contain an uncomfortable rawness because of the events continuously populating our devices – the immediacy, brutality and complexity of a world fueled by-“FakeNews?”, each one of us trying to construct a context in the “Filter Bubble” choreographed by algorithms from which we build a sense of the world we live in.
As International School educators, we straddle between the walled garden of “school” and the outside “world”. The reality is that we are surrounded by constant change and ambiguity. But there is a gap between the accelerated rate of change and our capacity to adapt to it. For some, the gap is wide. For others, the gap stays the same, and for a few, the gap is narrowing. How we interpret and engage with the gap and our own capacity to keep up influences many of our feelings and emotions. These in turn fuel the perceptions, opinions and behaviors with which we express ourselves.
International Schools have to juggle the fine line between ensuring students and parents are pleased and ensuring that they feel safe, challenged and cared for. In the unique world of International Schools, a percentage of parents come from a comfortable socio- economic environment. Often times, their education is a contributing factor to their current positions. This education provided the opportunities for their successes and their economic prosperity. Living with this becomes a strong marker in what International School parents believe their children should get from an education and an International School. This pedagogic reference point in many cases 25+ years old. The world was avery verydifferent place then. However we try as schools to innovate, change and adapt, we do this with a level of caution and reservation. At the end of the day, the invisible mandate between parents and international schools, is “provide my child with stability, continuity, what I remember from my school days and more certainty then I have in my life today“.
As educators, we fall into a similar narrative. We have a desire for of stability, continuity, and more certainty than in the outside world we interact with. We do innovate and change in our schools, but the presence of the invisible mandate between our parents and schools influences the level by which we break the status quo.
Today the level of stability, continuity, and certainty that we were once used to has eroded. Uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility are an unavoidable part of the day. The complexity of this change permeates into everyone’s lives, and often not by choice.
2018, is an opportunity to embrace the world’s uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility, not as something eroding our past and challenging our present, but as an opportunity to re-frame the possibilities in front of us as a unique and rich learning journey. We have a responsibility to take this on in our roles as mentors, facilitators and educators. We bring a wisdom, resilience and care that has served us well and can continue to serve us today. Many of our students will one day be International School parents or educators who look back at their education as a point of reference for their own success. The measures will be different. We live in a world where uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility are part of our lives. We should not depend on reference points from our past to give us stability, continuity and certainty. Thegapfor many will still get bigger and more uncomfortable. But hopefully, in 2018, we can work to bridge that gap as well.
The post is inspired by a L2talk I did at the Learning2 Europe conference in Warsaw.
“every storyteller has a bias – and so does every platform”- Andrew Postman “My Dad Predicted Trump in 1985 – It’s Not Orwell, He Warned, It’s Brave New World.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 02 Feb. 2017
I am an addict. Are you too? Don’t you hate it when you can’t find your phone, and a friend has to call it. Maybe the first thing you did this morning was check your phone and the last thing you did today was check your phone. Think of it, we walk and text, and even drive and text. Have you had this happen, you are in a social situation and you go the bathroom to check an update. You are standing on a street corner and suddenly realize you are on your phone swiping at it, unconsciously. Then there is the feeling you get when you post a picture on a social media feed. The “likes” start coming in. It feels good, really good, and then you check back and back. You post an update and there no “likes”. You start wondering to yourself what is going on?
I am sure you’ve heard about B.J Skinner’s rat experiment. The first rat had a lever in its cage, and every time it hit the lever food would come out. The second rat in the same set-up, hit the lever and nothing came out, no food. The third rat, same set-up, when it hit the lever a little food came out, then nothing, and then a lot, and then nothing again. The third rat developed an addiction. It quickly realized as long as it hit the lever it had a chance of getting some food. This is called the principal of variable rewards. That feel good feeling, the dopamine rush. Behavior design as explained in this article (Scientist who make our apps addictive by Ian Leslie 1843 Economist October.November 2016) is a critical part of every app development. Tech companies employ behavior economist, psychologist, and psychiatrists in the creation, design and curation of our apps ecosystems to ensure we keep coming back.
So many of our interactions with devices are subconscious. In Eric Pickersgill thought provoking photos series “Removed” (do spend some time on the link) he highlights the idea of being alone together as Sherry Turkle so aptly describes in her book Alone Together. We are often physically together with another person in a space sometimes even intimately but our mind’s burrowed in a phone.
As adults, we are quick t0 point the finger at kids for not being able to manage their screen-time. Think of this, the first time an infant will interact with a digital device is watching a parent using one. What does it feel like for a child in a pram looking up at their parent to only see a blank expression immersed in their smartphone. The dinner table conversation interrupted by parents checking work emails. Mary Aiken in her book “ The Cyber Effect” states we are asking the wrong question. Mary Aiken writes “We should not be asking at what age is it appropriate to give a digital device to an infant, but be asking the question when is it appropriate for an adult to interact with a digital device in front of an infant.”
A good example of behavior design is Snapchat and the new feature “streaks“. The idea of streaks if you have a dialogue with a friend over 24 hours and you continue this over days, a flame emoji shows up. In tandem a number counting your interactions keeps tally. Should one of you stop posting, an hour glass shows up giving you a heads up that the streak will disappear if you do not stay on. For adolescent’s social media relationships can be a gauge of their social capital. Streaks adds a layer of complexity to the interactions.
I am not against digital devices. I have been working in Education Technology as a coach, coordinator, IT Director and Director of eLearning for over 20 years. I love the seamless and frictionless experience of our digital environments.
By Jim McDougall from Glasgow, Scotland (Puppets on a String Uploaded by Snowmanradio) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia CommonsIt is a fact that our online data (health apps, social media, travel, online games, GPS, shopping, search etc…) is collected, analyzed, and then sold to third parties, or curated to give us a personalized online experiences with a clear goal to manipulate our behaviors. We as educators have an ethical responsibility to be skeptical of behavior design’s narrative. Let us challenge our learning communities to question the complexity and consequences of behavior design in our lives. Stuffing a digital citizenship lesson for 15 minutes during a Friday morning advisory is not enough. We need to make this narrative an integral part of the living curriculum.
Do we want to end up being puppets pulled by the strings of choreographed digital ecosystems which we do not control?
I think it is important to understand schools are most likely the last place where children interact with digital devices with balance and pedagogic purpose. We cannot take this for granted.
If we ignore behavior design we will loose something. Free will. I and you do not want to lose this.
A colleague of mine and her Kindergartners were busy exploring where an egg comes from. “Was it born like a baby? Does it grow on its own? Where do they come from? Different perspectives and ideas were shared enthusiastically. The children discussed and challenged each other with their theories. At the end of the activity, one child turned to her partner and said, “when I get home, I’ll ask Siri for the answer.” A routine response in our classrooms? Or an important moment to understand that artificial intelligence (AI) has embedded itself in our day to day lives? For a generation of children who have been raised on iPads and Siri, AI – with a name and voice like a human – is as ubiquitous as any other technology.
AI is a tool that learns, anticipates and predicts. It provides us with instantaneous information or completes routine tasks remotely. The Amazon Echo and Google Home, two new devices that have recently gained traction, have begun to enter the home as personal assistants. The Echo and Home are two of many voice-activated AI assistants that tap into vast artificial intelligence networks. They aggregate information based on our digital footprints and predict our habits based on a learning algorithm that engages continuously with the data we share on our digital devices.
A shift has occurred in our relationship with AI and the impact is profound. It is the seamless adaptation of AI into our lives – a frictionless experience that is slowly making us dependent on this predictive technology. This new relationship meets our unique taste and needs, and only gets better the more it knows about us. Over time, this is changing the way our brain functions when interacting in the digital world. This short video by AcademicEarth.org -“ Cognitive Offloading,” is a reminder of the neurological changes AI is having on our learning. We collectively feel more and more comfortable subcontracting out tasks to AI. The term ” let me google this” is an example.
For educators, this shift is showing up in our classrooms informally and in some instances invisibly. Artificial intelligences are important elements of the devices which exist in our school tool kits. These include mobile devices, apps, browsers, search engines, smartwatches, and more. Writer and professor Jason Ohler asks an important question in his article “Bio-Hacked Students On the Outer Edge of Digital Citizenship”. How should we, as educators, shift the curation of a scholastic experience when students come to the classroom with embedded or wearable artificial intelligences? This alters the value of the commodity of knowledge in the classroom and highlights a potentially new hierarchy where AI supplements a user’s expertise. Suddenly, we have 24/7 access to predictive and anticipatory information which has the potential to disrupt the independent learning experience of a typical classroom. In his article “Artificial intelligence is the next giant leap in education“, Alex Wood reflects on the role AI could play in education.
Coming to terms with these exponential changes takes time to digest. As educators, we need to understand that engagement and critical thinking are vital components of education, especially as AI shifts the classroom narrative. The ethical issues which surround these exponential changes are here now. The complacency that schools engage with in the discourse of what it means to be in a world dominated by AI is a tension we cannot ignore.
As educators, we have a unique opportunity to design curriculums around the narrative of artificial intelligence. We need to be encouraging our students to not only be good digital citizens but proactive digital leaders who understand the complexity of a world fueled by artificial AI. Schools should promote the skills and inquiry mindsets which provide students with the capacity to harness the power and opportunities of AI and not become complacent with the technology. Ultimately, we want our students to be active leaders and architects of AI’s continued growth. As educators, we have a responsibility to ensure our students have a working understanding of how to navigate a complex and changing world fueled by artificial intelligence for the good of future generations.
Beyond Digital 
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