Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Young people oppose Fitbits in schools

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

The generalization in the title is based on published research surveying 100 pupils aged 13 to 14 from two UK schools, which is to say, not reliable. I was able to access some of the original work at NRC, though I imagine it is paywalled elsewhere. Here's another paper from the same work (with none of the references to Foucault etc. cited in the other paper). I question not only the unrepresentative sample but the study itself. "Each pupil was asked to respond to a statement in turn that was presented to them by the interviewer. For example, statements introduced were 'I would recommend using the Fitbit to other people my age because … ' and 'as a result of wearing the Fitbit I learnt … '." There's no indication that the study was sponsored by FitBit (the authors credit Richard Benjamin Trust, whose website is several years out-of-date). Personally, I think there's a big difference between  being required to wear devices, and then being surveiled, as these studenmts were, and choosing to wear the device on one's own, keeping the data private. I think there's really interesting work to be done on the relation between education and surveillance. But this isn't the way to do it. 

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 25, 2024 08:28 a.m.

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