Thread by @BenjaminBHerold

1/ I spent the past couple months trying to understand how and why #edtech companies are trying to measure, monitor, and mold students' feelings, mindsets, and ways of thinking. You know what that means...thread incoming.

2/ First, let's look at some of the companies & researchers doing this work.

edweek.org/ew/articles/20…

3/ Like @AlgebraNationFL. A team of academics, funded by an $8.9m @IESResearch grant, have used the online platform to anonymously collect the clicks and keystrokes of 200,000 Fla. students. The goal: teach the software to pinpoint when kids feel happy, bored, or engaged.

4/ And @PanoramaEd, which has raised $32m in VC. Each year, the company administers online surveys to ~7m students in 8,500 schools. That means a huge central database of kids' responses to questions about #grit, #growthmindset, emotion regulation, social awareness, and more...

5/...Panorama also feeds back to districts like @spokaneschools their own info, which is used to help make a variety of decisions. “As we get more & more information from kids, I think we’ll respond to each student better & better,” said Spokane's director of assessment.

6/ There are also newer companies, like San Francisco-based startup Emote, a recent graduate of the @ycombinator @imaginek12 accelerator. Here's a video explaining the Emote app, which allows school staff to record & share observations of students' feelings in real time.

7/ “I think this is a really exciting vision of what school can look like,” Emote CEO Julian Golder said. “There’s more interest than we can handle at this point.”

8/ And then there's a dizzying array of emerging technologies...like @mursionlearn, which is starting to work with public schools to use its virtual reality simulations for things like helping autistic students develop social-emotional skills .mursion.com/download/14006…

9/ Or the FOCI--a wearable that clips to the waistband, tracks your breathing, and tells when you're focused or stressed. The app is billed as a "focus-enhancing mind coach." A press release billed it as a cure for digital distractions in the classroom. fociai.com

10/ And researchers like Sidney D'Mello & his team at the Emotive Computing Lab are doing cutting-edge work w/ eye-trackers, facial expression scanning, machine learning, and "intelligent tutors." sites.google.com/site/sidneydme…

11/ What does it all mean? @JIMSEDU of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is at the fore of efforts to make sense of this new landscape...

blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Digital…

12/ ...Shelton said kids' growth/learning encompasses physical, mental-health, identity, cognitive, social-emotional, & academic development.

“Unless you understand how they are relating to each other, it is very difficult to optimize any of them.”

13/ But Shelton and others also acknowledge it's an open question whether #edtech can reliably measure any #SEL skiills...an issue explored in-depth in this must-read piece by my colleague @EvieBlad.

edweek.org/ew/articles/20…

14/ And critics like @jane_jrobbins of @approject take a broader view, raising concerns re: privacy & liberty.

“The idea of telling children that even their feelings are not private & that we’re going to constantly surveil them & analyze them, is just un-American,” she said.

15/ University of Stirling lecturer @BenPatrickWill also raised the specter of Facebook/Cambridge Analytica-style behavior modification, targeted at students

16/ Add it all up, and K-12 is walking a tightrope, ably summed up by Jeremy Taylor, the director of assessment at @caselorg...

17/ “#SEL is really about building relationships & communities,” Taylor said. “We hope ed tech can support that, but we have to make sure things are done in a way that is responsible and not outpacing people’s comfort with what is happening in their schools,”

18/ fin