Being an Advocate for Voice in the K12 Landscape

My tank is full. This is always a very gratifying week for me as I start school back and feel I am a help regarding the implementation of edtech at our school. This week, added another level of awesomeness. I was invited to speak at the inaugural “Voice of Education Summit” held at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. To sit in a room with likeminded people all day long listening to quality speakers, conversing with designers and thought leaders, filled my EDU happy tank to the brim.

It isn’t an easy space to speak into. There are more school districts than not that have not accepted the use of smart speakers in the classroom. The main concern I hear is the concept of student privacy. Of course, it doesn’t help when news articles come out with constant stories of Alexa always listening and big named educational companies like Pearson having data breaches. I find myself feeling the sway of “considered risk” as Ian Freed, CEO of Bamboo Learning phrased it in his opening keynote at the event.

Then I see graphs like the one Ian shared below that shows the speed and depth of penetration of smart speakers thus far and I think, “these devices can’t be ignored!”

I truly believe voice is the next paradigm of computing. As I’ve said before, voice offers solutions to the k12 educational technology landscape that have never been options before.

1. Digital Equity. The price point makes access to information for all students a more likely possibility. Shanthan Kesharaju, creator of 1–2–3 Math shared a video of students in the villages of India accessing an Alexa device for learning. As he pointed out in his session, while access is an issue for some in the U.S., it is a nationwide epidemic issue for other countries.
2. Personalization. The ability for teachers to create their own skills by using blueprints or other 3rd party platforms allows teachers to create opportunities specifically for their classroom or even individual students. To have an additional “voice of authority” in the classroom frees the teacher to use her time for more interaction. If a teacher can have a group of students working on skills that scaffold the learning in the classroom using Alexa while she is teaching a different small group, there is less educational downtime and more individualized learning opportunities. The skills being developed today continue to grow in richness because of feedback that the developers receive from users. Do you want Voice to be beneficial to education? Start speaking into the space!
3. Communal Aspect. A continuous concern of mobile technology since its conception has been screen time. I love the fact that while there are smart speakers with screens, the premise is the concept of it being an oratory platform. This allows students to access information in the classroom without the increased possibility of off-task behavior that often happens on an ipad, chromebook or laptop. The entire class can ask Alexa a question, never taking their eyes off each other or having to mentally remove themselves from a discussion to “look something up.”

Do I have fears and concerns? Of course! I would not be a good instructional technologist if I didn’t constantly weigh the benefits and detriments of using voice. The main pushbacks I hear are the following:

1. Student Privacy. This is my main concern too, and why I have set up additional expectations of protection for voice to be used at our school. But if I look at the considered risk, I am well aware that we have had IoT devices on our network for a while- things like smartboards and robotics that have the ability to record student voices for replay. And let's be honest, SIRI has been in the back pocket of most teachers for years now and no one was questioning Apple’s intentions with that until recently. I am concerned, I am going to create safeguards that actually makes it harder on my teachers to use these devices robustly, but I believe the benefits outweigh the risk. I also am intentionally working towards this paradigm having a code of ethics to govern it.
2. Inappropriate Access and Use by Students. No teacher wants to fear a student going on a spending spree at Amazon using voice purchasing, and of course, that can be clicked off in setup. More real to a middle school teacher might be students yelling out questions to Alexa that might be inappropriate information for a middle schooler to hear or at the very least, inopportune in its timing. Many educators feel the burden of using Alexa with a remote or to walk over and turn it on and off adds another layer of frustration that doesn’t make it worth it. I will say that stating expectations for usage clearly in the beginning often circumvent issues with any technology that is available for student use. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater because of the fear of inappropriate use or one bad experience.
3. Lack of an Educational Platform. I think the main reason teachers and IT administrators are waiting is because they want to be told “here is a product deemed appropriate for educational use.” AND I GET IT! Workarounds are cumbersome and a little bit scary. We want to always make wise choices in protecting our students. We want Amazon or Google or someone else to say “Ta-da! Here it is, the platform you have been waiting on….now go create, have your students create, teach the next generation the benefits of voice conversational design!” THIS IS WHAT WE WANT. And for some educators, they continue to wait for just that, for others…like myself, I set so many additional safeguards and boundaries that we aren’t using these devices as robustly as I would like to.

The bottom line for me is this…every single day another Alexa skill is published that has the potential to greatly enhance the learning in classrooms around the world. Every single day, a developer is wondering “Is this good stuff? Would a teacher find it beneficial to their classroom?” I know this because very often these developers are reaching out to me specifically for the feedback! When educators don’t speak into a space, their voice doesn’t matter to developers. We have to be diligent in staying cutting edge so that this next paradigm doesn’t happen TO US but WITH US.

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