President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, faced a tough lineup of Senators at her confirmation hearing on Tuesday evening. The heated, partisan questioning primarily focused on DeVos’ beliefs on school choice/privatization, accountability, and civil rights and her financial contributions to education reform groups. Unfortunately, education technology was not a topic addressed directly by DeVos or by any of the Committee’s members.

The instructional materials marketplace has changed markedly over the last few years. More school districts are shifting from physical textbooks to digital and online resources and increasingly are utilizing openly licensed resources [or open educational resources (OER)] to supplement commercially developed materials. In addition, commercial materials developers have even begun to incorporate OER within their own content and have started to curate OER for schools.

First weeks of 2014 Promise a Busy Year on Student Data Privacy Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) announced plans today to introduce student data privacy legislation, likely amending the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The announcement was made at an EPIC event and featured reaction from CLIP’s Joel Ridenberg and USED CPO Kathleen Styles, among others. Senator Markey’s legislationwould restrict the use of student data for commercial purposes, require parental access and correction, require minimum security safeguards, and require private companies to delete information no longer needed to serve those students. SIIA responded that Federal Laws Protect Student Privacy. This week’s USED response to questions from Senator Markey similarly reinforced current federal protections. Meanwhile, state legislatures are considering bills across the country ranging from parental opt-in or opt-out to Parent’s Bill of Right ...