I have filed and will run a serious campaign to become one of the "At Large" members of the Minneapolis School Board in large part because I am alarmed at how our society's increasing reliance on internet-enabled devices to provide learning (and entertainment) to children makes them more vulnerable to the 'panopticon' the Reset the Net movement hopes to educate us about tomorrow.
Additionally the Minneapolis Public School District is flailing & thrashing on technology & labor policies is an area I have useful expertise in and hope to help stabilize the situation. Minneapolis Public Schools are doing a great job in a few other areas (Farm-to-School nutrition programs, etc.) I would love to help the Minneapolis School Board continue its "school lunch makeover" which has received a lot of favorable media coverage and is obviously embraced by a strong majority of informed Minneapolis voters.
Back to Reset the Net, the anniversary of the Snowden revelations:
This 'panopticon' described by Reset the Net is a hazardous environment where not just the NSA, but irresponsible corporations & potentially even child predators harvest detailed information from internet enabled devices and 'apps'. Nate Anderson at Ars Technica has written volumes about RAT hacking and privacy issues involving privacy invasion by remote administration and anti-theft technology installed in computers supplied to students by well-meaning school districts.
Despite the well known risks the adjacent and similarly large school district in Saint Paul, MN is moving ahead with plans to assign all students an iPad.
I strongly believe that it is unwise to encourage children to spend more unsupervised hours on the internet. I do believe that children in the public school system deserve opportunities to understand how the internet works, opportunities to become facile with the internet before they join the adult world in work environments, in higher education or in being engaged citizens, but the model of St. Paul Public Schools and too many charter schools in our area is not the way to do it.
I look forward to writing more soon about the contest for Minneapolis School Board at large seats and how my campaign fits the struggle to harvest the progressive moment that Rep. Keith Ellison described for the DFL Progressive Caucus in videos embedded in my last Daily Kos post.