Tonight, I watched the opening keynote of ALT 2021 day 1: Sonia Livingstone. The co-chairs started the session by talking about the ALT 2021 conference. I didn’t realize that the awarded twenty scholarships that went to students! Also, they have several sponsors including Open Academia, Talis, Open LMS, Turnitin, and Canvas. Livingstone is a professor and writer. The title of the presentation was “The datafication of education: in whose interests?” Livingstone’s research was funded by the McArthur Foundation. Livingstone observed a year 9 class from the back of the class. Livingstone describe concerns and scenarios of data practices in schools, for example. With the Digital Futures Commission, Livingstone worked on a project to analyze data practices with information about children. As she spoke, it made me think about how we use software data capture data. I didn’t understand what Livingstone meant with the title of the session… but then it was clear. Thus, it is necessary for us to be transparent about why we capture data and how we use it. Data often makes me think about experiments in the lab… but data may be clicks, images, or profiles.
