Educational Technlogy Blog

By: Taylor Doud

Introduction

In today’s classrooms, learning goes beyond the classroom and into a digital enviroment. Assignments, and even personal interactions often live online. While this offers new opportunities in expanding technlogy, it also raises an important question if students privacy is protected.

Current Privacy

A 2025 national survey found that 88 percent of district technology leaders rank student data protection as a top priority, yet many still lack leadership support, strong policies, or clear workflows (Langreo, 2025).

Adding to this concern, investigations have uncovered widespread use of artificial intelligence surveillance tools in schools. While these tools aim to identify issues such as cyberbullying or self-harm, they have also caused false alarms, infringed on privacy, and impacted marginalized students without clear evidence of increased safety (Associated Press, 2025).

Protecting Privacy in the Future

The path forward requires a continuous approach:

• Privacy by design: building protections into technology from the start.
• Emerging safeguards: using methods like differential privacy to minimize data exposure.
• Policy updates: ensuring regulations keep up with changes.
• Culture of awareness: training educators, students, and families to be conscious

Protecting student data focuses on respect, trust, and foresight. If we have technlogy that has supportive policies to focus on these, a safe digital enviroment can be available.

By combining strong technology, thoughtful policy, and the timeless wisdom of treating others as we wish to be treated, we can build safer digital environments for the next generation. As Luke 6:31 (New International Version, 2011) reminds us, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” This means handling student information with the same respect and care we would want for our own.

References:

Associated Press. (2025, March 6). Takeaways from our investigation on AI powered school surveillance. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/381fa82978f27eb85f20d03236820711

Langreo, L. (2025, March 25). Schools face an uphill battle in protecting student data in the age of AI. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/technology/schools-face-an-uphill-battle-in-protecting-student-data-in-the-age-of-ai/2025/03

The Holy Bible, New International Version. (2011). Zondervan. (Original work published 1978)