MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-09-05 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Kickbacks in the education field
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This is the second article from Sundays time worth noting and is very
sad and again spot on. We are at a point where as a society we are
suspending our critical thinking skills to fun and profit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/technology/silicon-valley-teachers-tech.html
Silicon Valley Courts Brand-Name Teachers, Raising Ethics Issues
By NATASHA SINGERSEPT. 2, 2017
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Photo
Kayla Delzer, a teacher in Mapleton, N.D., has created a flexible
classroom where her third graders sit where they please and learn to
post on Instagram. Tech companies are courting teachers like Ms. Delzer
to help improve and promote their education tools. Credit Dan Koeck for
The New York Times
MAPLETON, N.D. — One of the tech-savviest teachers in the United States
teaches third grade here at Mapleton Elementary, a public school with
about 100 students in the sparsely populated plains west of Fargo.
Her name is Kayla Delzer. Her third graders adore her. She teaches them
to post daily on the class Twitter and Instagram accounts she set up.
She remodeled her classroom based on Starbucks. And she uses apps like
Seesaw, a student portfolio platform where teachers and parents may view
and comment on a child’s schoolwork.
Ms. Delzer also has a second calling. She is a schoolteacher with her
own brand, Top Dog Teaching. Education start-ups like Seesaw give her
their premium classroom technology as well as swag like T-shirts or
freebies for the teachers who attend her workshops. She agrees to use
their products in her classroom and give the companies feedback. And she
recommends their wares to thousands of teachers who follow her on social
media.
“I will embed it in my brand every day,” Ms. Delzer said of Seesaw. “I
get to make it better.”
Ms. Delzer is a member of a growing tribe of teacher influencers, many
of whom promote classroom technology. They attract notice through their
blogs, social media accounts and conference talks. And they are
cultivated not only by start-ups like Seesaw, but by giants like Amazon,
Apple, Google and Microsoft, to influence which tools are used to teach
American schoolchildren.
Continue reading the main story
Their ranks are growing as public schools increasingly adopt all manner
of laptops, tablets, math teaching sites, quiz apps and parent-teacher
messaging apps. The corporate courtship of these teachers brings with it
profound new conflict-of-interest issues for the nation’s public schools.
Moreover, there is little rigorous research showing whether or not the
new technologies significantly improve student outcomes.
More than two dozen education start-ups have enlisted teachers as brand
ambassadors. Some give the teachers inexpensive gifts like free
classroom technology or T-shirts. Last year, TenMarks, a math-teaching
site owned by Amazon, offered Amazon gift cards to teachers who acted as
company advisers, and an additional $80 gift card for writing a post on
its blog, according to a TenMarks online forum.
Teachers said that more established start-ups gave them pricier perks
like travel expenses to industry-sponsored conferences attended by
thousands of teachers. In exchange, teacher ambassadors often promote
company products on social media or in their conference talks —
sometimes without explicitly disclosing their relationships with their
sponsors.
Many public schools are facing tight budgets, and administrators,
including the principal at Ms. Delzer’s school, said they welcomed
potentially valuable free technology and product training. Even so, some
education experts warned that company incentives might influence
teachers to adopt promoted digital tools over rival products or even
traditional approaches, like textbooks.
“Teachers can’t help but be seduced to make greater use of the
technology, given these efforts by tech companies,” said Samuel E.
Abrams, director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization
in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Public-school teachers who accept perks, meals or anything of value in
exchange for using a company’s products in their classrooms could also
run afoul of school district ethics policies or state laws regulating
government employees.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Nicholas Provenzano, an educator and tech brand ambassador in the
Detroit area, demonstrating a product at the International Society for
Technology in Education conference in Denver last year. Credit Nick Cote
for The New York Times
Photo
Educators at a reception that Amazon hosted at the Denver conference.
Credit Nick Cote for The New York Times
“Any time you are paying a public employee to promote a product in the
public classroom without transparency, then that’s problematic,” said
James E. Tierney, a former attorney general of Maine who is a lecturer
at Harvard Law School. “Should attorneys general be concerned about this
practice? The answer is yes.”
Ms. Delzer and other educators forcefully argue that they’re motivated
by altruism, and not company-bestowed status or gifts. “I am in this
profession for kids,” Ms. Delzer said, “not for notoriety or the money.”
At a time when teachers shell out an average of $600 of their own money
every year just to buy student supplies like pencils — and make pleas
for student laptops on DonorsChoose.org, a fund-raising site — it’s
understandable that teachers would embrace free classroom technology.
“My kids have access to awesome things that, as a district, we could
never afford,” said Nicholas Provenzano, an English teacher in the
Detroit area who is an ambassador for companies that make $1,299 3-D
printers and $300 coding kits. He noted that he had apprised his school,
and his students, of his company ties.
Another important draw for teachers, who already often feel
underappreciated: Having tech companies, the icons of American society,
seek their views provides welcome attention. “Teachers have really
responded well to feeling like they are being listened to,” said Carl
Sjogreen, a co-founder of Seesaw.
The benefits to companies are substantial. Many start-ups enlist their
ambassadors as product testers and de facto customer service
representatives who can field other teachers’ queries.
Apple, Google and Microsoft, which are in education partly to woo
students as lifetime users of their products, have more sophisticated
teacher efforts — with names like the Apple Distinguished Educators
program, Google for Education’s Certified Innovator Program and
Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert program. Each yearlong program
selects teachers to attend a conference and work with the company to
help create, or develop, education innovations, often using company
tools. The tech giants position their programs as professional
development for teachers, not marketing exercises.
Microsoft and Apple said they worked with schools to make sure any
conference travel expenses they covered for teachers complied with
district ethics rules. Google said it provided meals but not teachers’
travel expenses.
An Amazon representative, responding to a question about the gift cards
that TenMarks offered to certain teachers last year, said that the
company had not given that incentive recently and that it had procedures
“to ensure our compliance with applicable laws and to help facilitate
teachers’ obligations to their schools.”
The competition for these teacher evangelists has become so fierce that
GoEnnounce, a one-year-old platform where students can share profiles of
their accomplishments, decided to offer a financial incentive — a 15
percent cut of any school sales that resulted from referrals — to Ms.
Delzer and a few other selected teachers just to try to keep up with
rival companies’ perks.
So far, no teacher has asked for the payment, said Melissa Davis,
GoEnnounce’s chief executive. Still, she said, teacher referrals
accounted for 20 percent of GoEnnounce’s first-year sales.
“These champions are really essential in giving us a really powerful
foot in the door to meet with districts and schools,” Ms. Davis said.
The medical profession has long wrestled with a similar issue: Can
pharmaceutical-company gifts like speaking fees or conference junkets
influence physicians to prescribe certain medications? A recent study of
nearly 280,000 doctors concluded that physicians who received even one
free meal promoting a specific brand of medicine prescribed that
medication at significantly higher rates than they did similar drugs.
Drug makers are now required by law to provide details on their payments
— including gifts, meals and fees for promotional speeches — to a range
of physicians and academic medical centers.
Unlike industry influence in medicine, however, the phenomenon of
company-affiliated teachers has received little scrutiny. Twitter alone
is rife with educators broadcasting their company-bestowed titles.
“If medical experts started saying, ‘I’m a Google Certified Doctor’ or
‘I’m a Pfizer Distinguished Nurse,’ people would be up in arms,” said
Douglas A. Levin, president of EdTech Strategies, a consulting firm.
Another issue: The Federal Trade Commission considers sponsored posts to
be a form of advertising. It expects people who receive a product, a
meal or anything else of value from a company, in exchange for promoting
a product, to disclose that sponsorship when they endorse the product.
This is true for celebrities and teachers alike. And it applies equally
to conferences, YouTube videos, personal blogs or Twitter posts.
Some teachers and start-ups said they were not aware of those guidelines.
“If you are receiving any sort of incentive to promote the company’s
product, that is what we call a material relationship,” said Mary K.
Engle, associate director of the trade commission’s division of
advertising practices, “and that has to be clearly and conspicuously
disclosed in the endorsement message.”
For some teachers, corporate relationships can be steppingstones to
lucrative speaking or training engagements. Schools often hire
company-connected educators to give training sessions to their teachers.
And technology conferences for teachers often book influential teachers
as speakers.
Ms. Delzer said her fees for such events started at several thousand
dollars a day. Some veteran education influencers charge much more.
To do it all, Ms. Delzer negotiated a special contract with her
district, allowing her to take 10 unpaid days off a year. She uses those
days off to give speeches and run teacher workshops for other schools.
She spends some evenings and weekends doing her consulting work. She
also co-founded her own teacher training conference, called Happy Go Teach.
“It’s like two full-time jobs,” Ms. Delzer said.
The Starbucks Classroom
Just before 8:30 a.m. on school days, Ms. Delzer, 32, stations herself
at the classroom door. She greets each of her third graders by name,
ushering them in one by one with a brief shoulder squeeze. “I want them
to feel love when they walk in,” she said.
If her classroom looks less like a traditional schoolroom and more like
a den — with a colorful rug and inspirational signs exhorting children
to “DREAM” and “LAUGH” — that is no accident. A few years ago, Ms.
Delzer decided to remodel her classroom to foster the kind of
independent work habits she thought her students would need in life.
So she ditched the standard-issue desks and rearranged the room to look
more like the place where she goes to work on her conference talks: her
local Starbucks. Today, her third graders sit wherever they please — on
cushions, rocking chairs, balance balls.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Ms. Delzer said she devoted herself to her students during school hours,
with conference talks restricted to days off and her consulting work to
weekends and some school nights. “It’s like two full-time jobs,” she
said. Credit Dan Koeck for The New York Times
Photo
Ms. Delzer’s “Starbucks for kids” classroom, which she wrote about in an
industry publication, earned her national attention. Credit Dan Koeck
for The New York Times
“If I’m just feeling like relaxing, I usually sit on the rockers or the
ball chairs or the beanbag chairs,” Jennings, a third grader in Ms.
Delzer’s class last spring, explained. “But if I want to be really,
really focused, then I usually feel like going on something a little
harder so that I don’t lose concentration.”
The “Starbucks for kids” classroom proved so successful that Ms. Delzer
wrote about it for EdSurge, an industry publication, in 2015. The
article quickly spread in education circles.
Sitting in her local Starbucks in West Fargo, Ms. Delzer noted: “If you
Google ‘Starbucks Classroom,’ it’s a thing now.”
But Ms. Delzer said she did not start out seeking to influence the
practice of teaching. It was serendipity, she said, and an iPad experiment.
In 2011, Ms. Delzer’s school, in Thief River Falls, Minn., bought a few
iPads and asked her to try using them in class. Two years later, her
school’s technology director suggested that they speak at an education
conference about her experiment.
That was when Ms. Delzer realized, she said, that by addressing her
peers, she could reach vastly more students.
“I see the ripple effect on teachers who leave the conference,” she
said. “It’s really gratifying to know that those classrooms are better
because of it.”
Continue reading the main story
Photo
One of Ms. Delzer’s students making a voice recording last spring
explaining his answer to a math problem. Credit Dan Koeck for The New
York Times
Photo
Guidelines that Ms. Delzer’s class drew up included “I will choose a
seat where I can work productively.” Credit Dan Koeck for The New York Times
She soon found herself a bigger stage — at TEDxFargo, a local chapter of
the well-known TED conference. It was 2015, and she spoke about using
technology and other approaches to give students more autonomy. The
YouTube video of her talk has racked up more than 127,000 views.
Today, so many teachers from other districts want to visit her classroom
that Mapleton Elementary has set aside every Tuesday to host them. “We
limit it to four teachers a day,” Ms. Delzer said.
Some non-tech companies, too, are eager to harness her star power by
providing their products at no charge.
“BIG THANKS to our friends -at-TradeWestEDU for the new chairs, bean bags
and tables!” Ms. Delzer tweeted in January after Trade West Equipment,
an office and school supplier, furnished items for her classroom. “We
are loving our new #flexibleseating options!”
BIG T H A N K S to our friends at -at-TradeWestEDU for the new chairs,
bean bags, and tables! We are loving our new #flexibleseating options!
pic.twitter.com/OTN38lcbJT
— Kayla Delzer (-at-TopDogTeaching) Jan. 3, 2017
Potential for Conflict
One morning last spring, Ms. Delzer assigned her third graders a math
problem to solve on their iPads using Seesaw. Developed by two former
Facebook product managers, Seesaw lets students produce and share their
schoolwork as written notes, diagrams, audio recordings or videos.
Some children love the sharing aspect. “They can see what you are doing
now that we have Seesaw,” McCoy, a third grader in Ms. Delzer’s class,
said of his parents. “Other years they couldn’t — they were only able to
see on your papers.”
Ms. Delzer is also an ambassador for Seesaw, an unpaid post. “Seesaw, my
teacher heart loves you :-),” Ms. Delzer wrote on Instagram this year
with a video clip showing her students using the program. It was seen
more than 6,500 times.
Teaching, by nature, is a helping profession. And educators have a long
tradition of sharing ideas with colleagues.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Ms. Delzer explaining a math exercise on Seesaw, an online portfolio
service that lets students diagram their answers or record themselves
explaining their reasoning. Credit Dan Koeck for The New York Times
Photo
Jennings, a student who was in Ms. Delzer’s class, explaining how he
worked out a math problem. Credit Dan Koeck for The New York Times
Photo
Two of Ms. Delzer’s third graders planning for their next assignment:
using paper plates and cups to construct a roller coaster that can
smoothly carry a marble. Credit Dan Koeck for The New York Times
Ms. Delzer said she did not see a conflict between her teaching and
other activities. She said she deliberately divided her work, devoting
herself to her students during school hours while giving conference
talks on days off and working with companies on some school nights.
“It’s really important to keep the two things separate,” she said.
She added that she worked only with companies whose products she
personally believed in. Those relationships, she said, gave her valuable
access to resources that could benefit her students, colleagues and
teacher followers.
“If I am going to put my name on it, it either has to make learning
better for students or teaching better for teachers,” Ms. Delzer said.
But companies that tap public-school teachers to use or promote their
products in exchange for perks are effectively engaging the educators as
consultants — a situation that could conflict with teachers’ obligations
to their employer: schools.
According to the Seesaw site, for instance, the company expects its
teacher ambassadors to “use Seesaw regularly in your classroom,” host
two Seesaw-related conference talks or workshops annually and
participate in Seesaw discussions online. In exchange, Seesaw offers
teachers a subscription to its $120 premium service, product previews
and a company badge to post on their profiles.
Joel R. Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham University School of Law in
Manhattan, said those kinds of arrangements could violate state or
school district conflict-of-interest rules governing public employees.
“Vendors offering free technology to teachers for their personal or
professional use in exchange for teachers promoting it to students or
other teachers is a very questionable activity,” Professor Reidenberg said.
Tim Jacobson, the principal of Mapleton Elementary School, where Ms.
Delzer teaches, offered a different view. He described the
company-teacher relationships as mutually beneficial for schools and
industry. After Ms. Delzer developed a relationship with Seesaw, he
noted, the company gave every Mapleton teacher a premium subscription
and training sessions.
“It’s a real advantage when she comes back and she shares with us what
she sees happening at the forefront of education,” Mr. Jacobson said.
“Plus, it is good recognition for Mapleton Elementary School. We do a
lot of things you wouldn’t expect in a school of our size.”
Mr. Sjogreen, the Seesaw co-founder, said that his company’s ambassador
program did not pay teachers and that its premium software was not
valuable enough to be a draw for them.
“There is nothing that we are doing really to incentivize teachers to
become ambassadors,” he said. “To the extent that they give us great
feedback and help us spread the word, we are happy to support them to
become more knowledgeable.”
Ms. Delzer has also served as an Amazon Education “Teacher Innovator”; a
“Digital Image Champion” for GoEnnounce, the student portfolio platform;
a brand ambassador for GoNoodle, a classroom activity app; and a “Lead
Digital Innovator” for PBS LearningMedia, the education arm of the
nonprofit broadcasting company.
The Lesson of Drug Makers
One evening last spring, Mr. Provenzano, the English teacher and tech
company ambassador, came home from school and went downstairs to his
basement.
He had just finished teaching “To Kill a Mockingbird” in his English
classes at Grosse Pointe South, a public high school in a Detroit
suburb. And he had given his students an unusual choice of assignments:
They could make traditional class presentations, or use
computer-assisted design software to draft objects illustrating themes
from the novel.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Mr. Provenzano used a Dremel 3-D printer to turn his students’ designs
into real objects in his basement workshop in Michigan. Credit Brittany
Greeson for The New York Times
Photo
At Grosse Pointe South High School last spring, Mr. Provenzano helped a
student design an object inspired by “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Credit
Brittany Greeson for The New York Times
At a time when many teachers feel constrained by curriculum
requirements, Mr. Provenzano said digital tools provided a creative
outlet. The design software assignment also took advantage of his side
business, called The Nerdy Teacher. Mr. Provenzano consults for
education technology companies, and his basement is chock-full of the
electronics they send him to try.
Now, he used a $1,299 3-D printer sent to him by Dremel, a tool brand
for which he is an ambassador, to turn his students’ designs into
three-dimensional objects. He printed one student’s design, a gavel,
representing the struggle for justice in the novel.
Later he posted a photo of the gavel on Twitter, mentioning the brand:
“Student designed and -at-DremelEdu 3D40 printed gavel for a To Kill a
Mockingbird presentation.”
Student designed and -at-DremelEdu 3D40 printed gavel for a To Kill a
Mockingbird presentation. #MakerEd #PBL pic.twitter.com/0buZ2xCukN
— Nicholas Provenzano (-at-thenerdyteacher) April 13, 2017
Mr. Provenzano also blogs and gives conference presentations to
teachers, sharing interesting ways that he uses the 3-D printers. “I
feel comfortable saying teachers have bought Dremel because of me,” he said.
This teacher-influencer soft sell may be new in schools. But researchers
who study medical marketing recognize it from techniques used for years
by the pharmaceutical industry.
Drug makers have long cultivated doctors to promote brand-name medicines
to their peers. Insiders have a nickname for these doctors: “Key Opinion
Leaders.” Among other things, drug makers have paid physician
influencers to give talks about company drugs, sent them on junkets and
lavished them with fancy dinners.
If the ed-tech industry is now replicating these strategies, it is
because, at least in medicine, they work.
“These techniques encourage the use of the product being promoted rather
than evidence-based practices,” said Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, an
associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who has
studied how drug company payments influence doctors. “There is evidence
that even a small amount of money, like a meal, can influence prescribing.”
Continue reading the main story
Photo
An electronic whiteboard in Mr. Provenzano’s classroom last spring
displaying a design for a gavel, representing the theme of justice from
“To Kill a Mockingbird.” Credit Brittany Greeson for The New York Times
Photo
Amazon sponsored a workshop during which Mr. Provenzano showed teachers
how to use 3-D printers at the International Society for Technology in
Education conference last year. Credit Nick Cote for The New York Times
Some academic medical centers now prohibit their doctors from giving
industry-sponsored speeches. And some drug companies have stopped giving
doctors swag.
But there has been little public discussion about the ramifications of
similar tech industry cultivation of teachers.
Mr. Provenzano said he did not see a conflict of interest between his
teaching and industry affiliations, noting that his blog prominently
listed his company affiliations. He added that school districts often
hired him to train their teachers precisely because his industry
relationships had helped him become an expert.
He left his public-school teaching job over the summer and started a
position as director of maker spaces at a nearby private school. “These
ambassadorships helped me get this job,” Mr. Provenzano said.
Some ambassador programs involve formal contracts that may take
advantage of well-meaning teachers, legal experts said. For instance, a
document online reviewed by The New York Times titled “Dremel Idea
Builder Ambassador Agreement” contains a number of stipulations for
teachers.
Among other things, the document said the company would provide a 3-D
printer in exchange for a teacher’s developing at least one four-minute
video tutorial every other month featuring a classroom project using the
device. It required the teacher to give Dremel-related presentations at
two or more conferences. The document, as written, also included a
noncompete clause prohibiting teachers from working with other 3-D
printing companies.
And Professor Reidenberg of Fordham Law pointed out that the document
reviewed by The Times would give Dremel the right to settle any legal
claims arising from the teacher’s work, while making the teacher liable
for legal costs. “This clause could bankrupt the teacher,” Professor
Reidenberg said.
Linda Beckmeyer, a spokeswoman for Bosch, the maker of Dremel, said its
contract with teachers was confidential and declined to discuss its terms.
“The purpose of the ambassador program is to advance the maker movement
in education by giving teachers and students access to 3-D printing,”
she said.
‘We Are Not All Kim Kardashians’
Earlier this year, after school, Ms. Delzer drove to Kittsona, a trendy
midpriced clothing boutique in Fargo. She already had a host of speaking
engagements on her calendar, and she wanted new outfits to wear to them.
The Kittsona staff greeted her like a V.I.P.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Kayla Delzer during a fitting with Sarah Henning at Kittsona, a boutique
in Fargo, N.D. Kittsona provides Ms. Delzer with free clothing for her
speaking engagements; in exchange, she promotes Kittsona on social
media. Credit Dan Koeck for The New York Times
Last year, the store’s owners agreed to outfit Ms. Delzer free of charge
after she asked them to sponsor her in exchange for her tagging Kittsona
on social media. Now, a stylist rushed about, picking out cute
sleeveless dresses, embroidered tunics, layered necklaces and suede
bootees for the teacher to try on.
Kittsona ran several promotions this year in which Ms. Delzer offered
her Instagram followers a store discount. Each one directly resulted in
50 to 100 sales, said Nicole Johnson, Kittsona’s co-owner.
It was an indication, she said, that young working women were responding
to Ms. Delzer’s ambitious-but-approachable schoolteacher brand. “We are
not all Kim Kardashians,” Ms. Johnson said.
An hour or so later, Ms. Delzer left the boutique laden with shopping
bags. But her working day was hardly done.
After dinner, Ms. Delzer installed herself at her kitchen counter.
Dozens of emails from companies, conferences, publishers and teacher
fans on social media needed responses.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Ms. Delzer, at home, planning events over Skype with her co-founding
partner in Happy Go Teach, a series of teacher training workshops.
Credit Dan Koeck for The New York Times
Ms. Delzer recalled how, when she was starting out a few years ago, some
veteran teacher influencers snubbed her. Tonight, she would try to
respond to as many requests as possible. “I just drink a lot of coffee,”
she said.
If her Top Dog Teaching fans nationwide love her, so do her third
graders. One reason is that she often treats them like budding adults.
Every fall, for instance, Ms. Delzer holds a social media boot camp to
teach her students how to run the class Instagram and Twitter accounts.
She teaches them rules like “never share your password” and helps them
understand how to maintain an upbeat online image.
After all, the class accounts, called TopDogKids, are essentially an
offshoot of her own.
“You don’t want to post something bad,” McCoy, the third grader, said,
“because if you want a job, those people are probably going to look at
your social media page and they are going to decide if they’ll let you
have the job.”
Lest they forget, a sign on the classroom wall reminded students and
teacher alike: “I am building my digital footprint every day.”
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Gracie was selected by Ms. Delzer to run the class Instagram account,
called TopDogKids, for a day. Credit Dan Koeck for The New York Times
--
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DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
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