Education Technology: Friend or Foe. Backgrounder

Overview & Synopsis

Education technology facilitates personalized learning and allows educators to better target instruction based on identified needs. Technology also improves the ability of education researchers to evaluate instructional approaches and interventions and provides policymakers information to aid in decision making. A majority of parents support the use of new technology and do not cite data privacy as a top tier education concern (compared to such issues as teacher effectiveness, standardized testing and school performance). Furthermore, data breaches in education are relatively uncommon. Nevertheless, several high profile incidents raised awareness of the amount of data being collected and the vulnerabilities where data are not properly secured.