From: William Gunn <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 12:56:42 -0700

One the one hand, if you're tweeting things publicly, you shouldn't be
surprised when someone responds to the tweet. On the other hand, if
you're mining tweets for actionable offenses, you'd better
double-check once you think you have found something before sounding
an alarm. In this case, Pearson could have avoided the problems with a
human in the loop, rather than assuming any tweet of a test image was
automatically a violation.

It's not so much what they did, but how they did it. People can and
IMO should push back against trial-by-algorithm.

--
William Gunn | Head of Academic Outreach, Mendeley | @mrgunn
http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/william-gunn | (650) 614-1749



On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 4:37 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Michael Magoulias <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2015 15:17:34 +0000
>
> As a parent with a child doing the PARCC at this very moment, this
> strikes me as an amateurish and  irresponsible attempt at
> investigative journalism. Pearson was clearly trying to ensure the
> integrity of the test and to prevent a possible case of
> cyber-cheating. If a student tweets an image of a test question that
> would be the most sensible assumption to make. What is not sensible is
> to jump to the conclusion that this is some Orwellian abrogation of
> basic rights. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of cases out there
> of inappropriate monitoring and misuse of personal data, but this
> doesn't sound anywhere close to being one of them. The fact that there
> are journalists (and parents) unable to make the appropriate
> distinctions is a far more worrying sign of the times.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 16:36:21 +0000
>
> “The (NJ) DOE informed us that Pearson is monitoring all social media
> during the PARCC testing.”
>
> DOE=state education department in New Jersey. source Elizabeth Jewett,
> Wachtung Hills Regional High School District see link for her full
> letter.
>
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/14/1370865/-Pearson-Caught-Spying-On-Students-Big-Brother-Is-Here
>
> From the Daily Kos post: "Jewett sent out an e-mail–... to her
> colleagues expressing concern about the unauthorized spying on
> students. She said parents are upset and added that she thought
> Pearson’s behavior would contribute to the growing “opt out” movement.
>
> In her email, Jewett said the district’s testing coordinator received
> a late night call from the state education department saying that
> Pearson had “initiated a Priority 1 Alert for an item breach within
> our school.”
>
> The unnamed state education department employee contended a student
> took a picture of a test item and tweeted it. But it turned out the
> student had posted–at 3:18 pm, after testing was over–a tweet about
> one of the items with no picture. Jewett does not say the student
> revealed a question. Jewett continues:
>
> “The student deleted the tweet and we spoke with the parent–who was
> obviously highly concerned as to her child’s tweets being monitored by
> the DOE (state education department)."
>
> NB :dailykos. associated links don't seem to be working as I send this..
>
> There is a twitter hashtag- #PeepingPearson  and a current link to a
> current Washington Post article :"Pearson monitoring social media for
> security breaches during PARCC testing"
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/14/pearson-monitoring-social-media-for-security-breaches-during-parcc-testing/
>
> includes the letter from Jewett.
>
> Also see twitter #optout