I've seen how big tech has transformed the classroom and parents are right to be worried | Velislava Hillman

"A quiet transformation is unfolding in schools: commercial technology is rapidly reshaping how children learn, often without much public debate or inquiry. From the near-ubiquity of Google and Microsoft to speculative AI products such as Century Tech, big and ed tech alike promise personalised learning while harvesting vast amounts of data and turning education to monetisable widgets and digital badges. The so-called digitalisation of education is far less revolutionary in reality."

"Children sit at screens making PowerPoint slides or clicking through apps such as Dr Frost or Quizlet. Lessons are often punctuated by pop-up adverts and cookie-consent banners — the gateway to surveillance and profiling. Others chase Duolingo streaks, supposedly learning French, scramble coins or fight for leaderboard spots on Blooket. Teachers, meanwhile, are handed dashboards from platforms such as Arbor or NetSupport, where pupils appear as scores and traffic-light charts — a thin proxy for the complexity of classroom life."

"Parents often feel a quiet unease watching their children absorbed by screens, yet worry that pushing back might leave them behind. That self-doubt is no accident. It mirrors the marketing logic that kept people smoking for decades — big tobacco sowed doubt and turned public concern into private guilt by funding skewed research insisting that there is not enough evidence of harm, shifting responsibility on to individuals and pouring vast sums into lobbying to delay regulation."

Commercial technology is reshaping schooling through widely used platforms and emerging AI products that promise personalised learning while collecting large volumes of student data. Instruction increasingly relies on screen-based tasks, apps, and gamified incentives, often interrupted by adverts and cookie-consent prompts that enable surveillance and profiling. Teachers receive analytics dashboards that reduce pupils to scores and traffic-light charts, simplifying complex classroom dynamics. Corporate competition and profit motives drive these systems and marketing strategies that manufacture doubt, shift responsibility onto individuals, and delay regulation. The result is a growing divide between mass app-based instruction for many and human tutoring and intellectual exchange for the privileged.

Read at www.theguardian.com