Friday, March 22, 2013

Common Core: The Glue That Ties This All Together

Shawn Bay, CEO of eScholar spoke at the recent Datapalooza Conference in Washington D.C. where he said, "The data that we need for all of this to work is Common Core data.  This is the glue that actually ties this thing together."

It's disturbing enough to know that those behind this big data push look at our children as nothing but mindless robots.  As though when a five year old says they want to be a doctor when they grow up, we will give them a stethoscope and put them on the path towards medicine.  Because children, or adults for that matter, RARELY change their minds about what they want to be "when they grow up." 

And if they do, well...now there's an "app" for that.


And they will use all of this "secure" data they collect to do it.

Since a student will have their own personal electronic device, they can now develop their  "Personal Learning Profile" which is a part of Obama's "My Data Initiative."


"...A collection of all the information about what and how I learn. Both in formal settings like school and in INformal settings like online learning or community activities. So I would include grades and test scores as well as results from a robotics competition, feedback from a violin performance or books I've read."



There was a time when this would have been considered STALKING.



A White House memo from January 2012 states that through an "expanded public-private-sector commitments" the creation of a "MyData Button" would allow students to "download their own data into a simple, machine-readable file that they could share, at their own discretion, with third parties that develop helpful consumer tools." 


One such use of this data would be to connect a student's data to Microsoft's HealthVault.

"Microsoft commits to creating a cloud-based platform for a Lifelong Learning Record (LLR). By building on the success of HealthVault they can accelerate this work. Developers and partners will be able to use the open, cross-platform HealthVault application programming interface to build "apps" in support of individual learners, facilitating an ecosystem of services that help students not only manage their lifelong learning profile, but also use it in novel ways. For example, automatically demonstrating proof of competency in a work setting, or earning academic achievements and reputation points with peers."
Obama didn't mandate digitalized health records because he actually believes it would help to lower the cost of health care.  Soon, our child's health records will be linked to their school records.  The government will claim that the more the school knows about the student, the faster they can provide the necessary resources to help them.  Because, all parents are inept and completely incapable of taking care of their own children.  The federal government, who now controls our healthcare and our schools, will then be able to control virtually every aspect of our child's life.


The memo continues:

Parchment, with a mission to unleash education credentials by unlocking the critical data they embody, commits to implementing a "MyData Button" to help students securely store, aggregate, and put their education data to work in their personal credential account. Parchment further commits to work in a collaborative manner with others in the education technology industry to standardize the format, as well as to encourage its reuse by third-party application developers."
"Its REUSE BY THIRD-PARTY DEVELOPERS?" But, we've been told all of this data the government would collect would be SECURE.  Now we learn that our children's information will be used by companies  developers as their free focus group? 
States such as California have committed to running core Learning Registry infrastructure, and INCREASING THE AMOUNT OF DATA THEY WILL SHARE WITH THE PUBLIC AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS, INCLUDING COMMON CORE STANDARDS ALIGNMENT DATA.

Cloud-based data with all kinds of information about our children from Head Start through career. 

That's not scary at all.