It often seems like the perils to our privacy and security online are not just growing, but are outpacing analogous perils to our existence in the real world. I don’t think I’ve come across a term to encompass digital agoraphobia, but it must be an anxiety disorder in its own right.
The reason this option is offered here is that Gartner (2021) has identified the “Privacy-Enhancing Computation” as a top ten technology (below), so perhaps a tipping point is near.
Opportunity Statement:
What would it be like for a learner – or an educator – to feel unburdened and unthreatened by malicious entities in their digital world?
Sources:
Gartner Top Ten Technologies 2021: Privacy-Enhancing Computation
Operating in the field of educational technology is inherently accompanied by a pressing need to be engaged with privacy & security. Learning is increasingly taking place through – or supplemented by – online interactions in a variety of modalities. Yet learning is a vulnerable process that requires trust between both the learner and the educator or educational institution.
The digital landscape, where years of social network privacy fiascos, rampant data mining, and incessant scams, have made for entire generations of mistrusting online users. At the same time, tracking learners and collecting their data can be incredibly valuable for learning analytics activities which enhance the learning process. Thus, this emerging market is paramount to the cultivation of trust in any online learning environment where data is collected. Maintaining privacy and security can be tedious and complex – any technologies that help alleviate this will be incredibly valuable.
The thought of living in a world where we worry less about online privacy and security is incredibly exciting. Institutions, especially in areas like healthcare and education carry a lot of responsibility as it relates to privacy and security due to the sensitivity of the data. The risks of a data breach prevent the sharing of much of this data. One of the most immediate areas where I could see this being beneficial is in educational research. Enabling more data to be shared between schools and research institutions, combined with advances in artificial intelligence could result in incredible advancements in our understanding of how humans learn. While there would need to be many other legal and ethical questions that would need to be explored before this could happen, the potential is very exciting.