Audrey brings up a number of excellent questions at the conclusion of her post, some of which I hadn’t considered before. I have been so saturated in media and technology myself, that I haven’t seriously considered any implications of bathing in it. I can’t say that I am petrified or even frightened of being part of the data, but I do feel a righteous need to protect my students, since they don’t seem to have any control over what is collected on them and what is done with the data. It actually ticks me off a little bit, to be honest. I’m a grown adult and am able to take full responsibility for my own actions and for what I “put out there”; however, my kids are just kids, and everyone deserves the right to privacy.
I think I take for granted that the platforms we use like Blackboard Collaborate, Desire2Learn, i-Ready, Google apps, Edmodo, CDT, etc. are safe and private. I suppose I have been naïve with this thinking. After all, I can drill into any one of my students’ Blackboard profiles to see how and when they use any particular function of my course. If I can do that from a teacher standpoint, I wonder what the administrator side or corporate is able to pull. In D2L, I can see at what time and for how long a student worked on a particular question in a quiz. I-Ready gives me a red flag if a student spends less than a few seconds on any question, alerting me to the fact that it may be an invalid test. When a class of mine responds to questions on a Google form, I can analyze the data by clicking on a button and instantaneously organizing the results which are all time stamped. I don’t know, I guess I have enjoyed the fact that I can access more information on my online students that I really ever could on my brick-and-mortar school students. Having inside looks into their use of technology and digital footprints, I think I really have been able to be a more effective teacher, at least from my perspective. But I am a trusted collector of their data, and I only have their best intentions in mind with my use of it. Where the data goes beyond me and my school is what makes me a little nervous, and Ms. Watters did a wonderful job at increasing my distrust. I will add this to the list of things in education that make me lose sleep.
Even writing this blog post, I am hyperaware that anyone can read it. Now I am worried that one of my students could potentially Google my name and search to find this particular blog. I have to think about what I am writing and about my audience (anyone!). I most definitely would not want to offend anyone who I care about, student and parent alike, nor would I want to turn families away from online education because of privacy issues. On the flipside, I also know that this post will never go away, even if I delete it. One only needs to go and use the Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/web/) to see what it looked like on any given day. Everything is recoverable. It is a really murky ocean that we are swimming in, and I have more questions than answers at this point.
Inspiration and Perspiration 
Laura, you discuss how our access to student data is actually helpful, which I agree with 100%. We, as teachers, should be the ones looking at the data the most. We have our best interests at heart and we want our students to show growth. I, like you, am not really scared of the data that is out there. I just worry about who is using data to benefit themselves or fulfill a job task assigned by a politician boss.
You bring up a good point that, as adults, we know that everything we put out there on the internet can be used for or against us. Students of all ages don’t think before they type sometimes and they write things or do things that could be used against them at some point. I try to remind students and my own children that anything they put on the internet could come back to haunt them at the most inopportune time, such as with scholarship or job applications.