DRPC Blog Post: Pulling the Plug: Instructure/Canvas Breach...
Charles Woods
Colleagues,
The Digital Rhetorical Privacy Collective has just published a new blog post,
“Pulling the Plug: Instructure/Canvas Breach, Educational Data Privacy, and a Call to Reduce/Rethink/Refuse LMS Use.”
Excerpt: "This may be difficult, especially since LMSs are often mandated and, for-better-or-worse, do provide a level of centralized exchange that makes teaching and learning more convenient, but maybe it's time to reduce and rethink (at minimum) or perhaps even refuse LMS use. Our dependence on data creating and data collecting technologies in education makes classrooms vulnerable. Canvas––just one of many Ed Tech companies–– has exclusive multi-year multi-million contracts with schools, universities, and even entire states. If this company can be hacked and its data archives ransomed, what confidence can we have with these technologies as tools for learning? Recent moves to reduce Ed Tech use and refuse GenAI integrations demonstrate opportunities for, if not disentangling ourselves completely, at least not adding to and simplifying the techno-infrastructures that hold up contemporary education. How to move forward is a pedagogical choice every teacher will need to make based on their specific institutional, technological, and ethical contexts."
Thanks,