[00:00:00] Digital dominoes. Hello and welcome to our special series where we share the moving stories of parents who have had to become privacy champions for their children, specifically within the school environment. These stories are about the moments when those parents realized that their that they needed to take action to protect their children's digital lives at school.

By sharing them, we aim to [00:00:30] motivate other parents to do the same. Hello and welcome to another episode of EdTech Privacy Parents. Today I'm talking to Tom in Belgium, who has had some very interesting experiences with the way tech has been implemented in his children's schools. So, thank you so much for being willing to tell your story, Tom.

You're welcome. Can we start by getting a little bit of background? From what age did your kids have tech in school and [00:01:00] what was it? How much did they use it? Just to have an idea. Well, I think it started from when they were eight or nine. And they started getting the, uh, the Chromebooks in school. At the end of the beginning, the Chromebook was stayed in the school so to avoid it getting damaged when they were taking it home.

So it was not really clear what they had on the, on the Chromebook, what they could do with it, but they were definitely working on it. This might be a silly question, but at that point, did they still have books? Yes, they still had books. [00:01:30] Okay. And, and they do now, if I remember correctly, your kids are like 13 or 14 something now.

Yeah, something like that. They are still using books, so it's not, not purely the printed books or purely the, the, the tech. It's, it's more like a combination of, of everything. Okay. And how's the experience been with tech at school? Obviously you're here because you had some negative experiences. So, I mean, how did it start?

When was your first warning bells that there might be something wrong? [00:02:00] The ticket itself. Okay. It's useful and it's whatever they're doing with it. But it's more the fact that apparently the school does not seem to realize the privacy impact. So let's say on the Chromebooks, the kids were showing me, okay, we can, uh, easily log in onto YouTube.

For example, they just used their email address from school that they got assigned. So I was looking a little bit more on what else they could do, and I noticed they, yeah, it's, what they actually got was a basic [00:02:30] configuration Chromebook, no, no privacy settings whatsoever, everything was still fully open.

So, uh, That might make me wonder a little bit, okay, uh, something needs to be, maybe needs to be changed here to make it a little bit more privacy friendly. A lot of people don't even, like, care or they don't have it on their radar. How did it happen that you were thinking about this kind of thing? Yeah, I always have been a little bit interested in privacy and [00:03:00] yeah, our privacy is on a slippery slope.

Slowly, slowly, we are accepting more and more things. And I think in my case, I really said, okay, this is getting too much. When I came back one day years back from a grocery store or a bakery and like when I came home my My phone actually asked me how was your visit to the to the bakery and I was like, okay Why the hell do you need to know what my what my experience was at the bakery?

That was the tipping point Yeah, [00:03:30] that's an interesting point what you made right now. And it's, it's something that when we were preparing for this, that really hit me about what you were saying about your kids experience, what you said, it's slowly, slowly, we're losing a grasp of our privacy. And especially if you start with young kids and even in school, we're basically traditionally, this is where you learn a lot of how you're supposed to act in society. What you can expect what's right, what's wrong. [00:04:00] If the privacy in terms of tech isn't strictly respected there, when are they going to learn it? Right. If they start with eight or nine and they have, um, a device. That isn't really secured. So do you want to tell us about the security, like the passwords and all of that?

Yeah. I asked in the elementary school, one of my kids came home and he said, ah, we had some, some issue with the Chromebooks because somebody was posting some things on another one's profile. I said, okay, but how, how is it [00:04:30] possible? Yeah, but we are all using the same passwords. Okay. So I talked to the teacher and I explained, okay, maybe this is not the best idea.

And then she said, yeah, well, you know, it's difficult because maybe they forget the password. And I'm thinking, but there are other solutions. So she changed the passwords. And then I asked my kid, I said, okay, it's okay now. She said, ah, not really, because We all have different passwords, but there is a nice logic in it.

Because if you know one password, you can automatically detect the other ones. Because it's just one number difference. [00:05:00] So I said, okay, this is still not okay. So I talked again to the teacher. And then on the end, he came with the solution. Okay, we'll give everybody a completely individual password. But I will write it down on a small paper.

I will put it in a secure place. So if they forget it, I can still easily get them back online. Still not, not the ideal situation, but okay, I can live with that one. So that's, uh, that's already something. But then I, I talked with the middle school, um, on the same thing and I said, okay, but you're also not using multi factor authentication.

You're just using a basic [00:05:30] password. And they were like, yeah, you know, it's too complicated for kids of, of 11, 12 years to, to work with a multi factor authentication. So I think, and I also explained this to the school, I think they are living in a misjudged reality where they are thinking that kids are not going to understand multi-factor authentification.

I think it's the moment that you have to teach them how to use it, how to use it correctly, and then they will continue to use it in their further life. Otherwise, they are never going to learn it. If they are not going to learn it when they are now at this age, yeah, it's a [00:06:00] lost opportunity. Yes, I fully agree with you.

And that's really, really interesting. This was such a big light bulb moment for me when you explained it, because on the one hand, it's so simple. But then on the other hand, obviously it's not so simple, right? Because I've also heard, you know, kids, they have trouble understanding. There was one parent who said they had the passwords just printed and put on the Chromebook.

It was also a Chromebook. So it was just a sticker. And. [00:06:30] When, as you said, when are they going to learn it, when you say, okay, now you have to care about your privacy. And then there's no wonder that we have trouble getting youth to really respect their privacy in basic data security. If when we first start out, let's say, okay, you're too young to understand this.

So the question is, if they're too young to understand the safety, the basic safety of a device, should they even have the device? It's also part of the [00:07:00] responsibility of the school to take care of these things and explain the differences. But I understand it's not easy for a school to make time for this.

They say, okay, our main role is education. It's not being busy with this one. But I don't really agree with their opinion and that it's their responsibility to teach the children basic security, safety settings of these devices. Yeah, I think so, too, and I think, honestly, I think that should be a given, um, but I do understand that schools are a little bit overwhelmed with it because they're also not prepared.

They're like, take [00:07:30] these devices. The tech companies negotiate often directly with the school. And they often don't have the experts there. And another thing that you told me before that I found extremely interesting was actually in Belgium, there's even a policy defining how schools should treat Chromebooks.

It's actually, it's quite well made. It's giving quite a lot of interesting insights on what's gathered and what you should not do and what you should do and how you can, how you can make the Chromebooks a little [00:08:00] bit more privacy minded. As an example, they say instead of giving the login credentials for the student.

Don't give name, first name, and then the school just put something else. It's not, uh, don't put the name, put something else. When the schools are saying, ah, but we don't want to reduce a student to a number. No, it's not meaning you need to put a number. You can put whatever you want as long as it's not really the name that's directly linkable to a, to a certain student.

It's extremely interesting and I'll put it into the, the link in the show [00:08:30] notes. Because it's such a valuable tool, actually, and it's a little bit sad, actually, the experience that you had. Even having such a well written, well researched tool about how to ensure privacy and safety of kids and the schools are having trouble, I don't want to say taking it seriously or using it for whatever reason, it seems a really difficult battle, right?

I mean, right at the very beginning of it, it says basically, if you don't [00:09:00] have it, don't implement it, try to avoid it. And they realized because of the privacy. issues. They're just recommending not to use Chromebooks at all in schools. Yeah, that's basically what it says. It says, if you're using Chromebooks, think of an exit strategy.

If you don't use them, don't start with it. And they say, if you are using them and you are working on the exit strategy, look at the back of the document and there are all the, the additional steps that you can take to make it more, uh, more [00:09:30] privacy friendly. It's a quite well made document. It is. And I think it's really great that this exists.

I mean, obviously, the longer that they're able to get the data, the more money they can make from it, right? Because kids data is, is worth a lot because you're getting them really, really early. Tell us more about the reaction, like other parents and the school, even your kids, what kind of reactions and understanding or non understanding do you get when you try to push these issues?

It's funny because with the kids it's it's depending one of them [00:10:00] is like fully understanding it and she says okay I have switched off all locations on my smartphone. I switch off everything what I can. I'm not sharing anything online It's and then other ones are oh, you know, it's fun to share things and I try to explain them and they are not Yeah, no, you cannot get through to them.

Okay, the school now started Implementing some of the recommendations and one of them is they shut down all this externals like YouTube And then, um, we were talking about this with my children and [00:10:30] they said, yeah, you know, the teacher wants to show us a small movie. And they said, no, YouTube has to be blocked because there was one parent complaining in the entire school.

And now we had to shut down YouTube. And of course, I have some children saying, yeah, please don't tell to anybody that you did this because we will have a very hard time explaining these to more than 1, 000 students. Why our father asked the school to shut down YouTube. It must be difficult actually to be that one parent.

I, I don't have to fight these [00:11:00] battles personally yet, but it must be really tough on this because you have to go against the school. You have to go against the teachers, the other parents, even your kids sometimes. But I think it's kind of fun.

Because, okay, I had to, because they were not, they were not, uh, school was not really taking me serious. So I filed a complaint with the Belgian data protection authority. So they are now a little bit realizing, okay, I kidded the complaint. It's still [00:11:30] ongoing. So it's a very slow process, but the school is starting to understand.

Okay. Maybe this is not the best idea. And then I had one of my children coming home and they just said, ah, you know, We are now going to install monitoring software on our laptops because too many children are busy watching, uh, football games in, in schools. Uh, we are going to, to work on that one with monitoring software so they can watch from the front of the classroom what we are doing on the laptops.

I said we are not going to do this, eh? So I contacted the [00:12:00] school, I asked for a meeting, I explained my point, and I got a lot of very strange ideas out of them, why they should be doing this and, but I think in the end they kind of understood it and said, okay, we will not do this because it's not going to work out.

Yeah, monitoring software, I think this is another thing I've heard quite a bit, the big discussion, right? On the one hand, you have to keep The kids safe. But on the other hand, if you normalize monitoring like that, then as you say, it's a slippery slope and, and you were [00:12:30] explaining that their idea was.

that they would only do the monitoring for laptops that were connected on the school Wi-Fi? Yeah, this was, this was one of the contingency measures to, to please me, because I told them, okay, you can take over the screen of the, of the computer, you can take over the camera. So in theory, when they are with all this homeschool education, you can see what's happening in their, in their house, what's happening in their room.

Maybe potentially this has some, sensitive information. This [00:13:00] is, uh, you know, you should not be taking this for granted what you see in the camera that it's to be shared with everybody. People are not realizing this, and they say, you know, we will put it then that it's only working on the on the Wi-Fi network of the school.

Okay, but you told me five minutes ago that your Wi-Fi Uh, network is, is not of the greatest quality and that you are allowing students to connect with their hotspots on their phones. Since at the moment they know this, yeah, everybody [00:13:30] will be on this hotspot and your Wi-Fi will be perfect because there is nobody there anymore.

Yeah, yeah, okay, and, and, and it's, it's there for trying to find excuses, and ah, we will only use it during school hours, and we will trust our teachers, and check, you know, it should not be like this, it should not be, uh, if you want to do this, walk around in the classroom, don't, don't put monitoring software, just walk around when they are working, and you can immediately see what they are doing.

And actually, one of the teachers that was [00:14:00] there, she had a, she had a very good point, she said, okay, if I, Think that they are doing something else on their laptop what they should not be doing. I'm just telling them. Okay, everybody raise your hands And then she starts walking around and then she can see immediately who's doing what and if they are busy with something for school or not.

That's a really good point. I really love that teacher's solution. When you describe it, it's something that I think every time one of these parents tells me a story. Is that it's a [00:14:30] mess in the sense that that technology is being implemented in school for the sake of digital literacy and getting them prepared for the real world with digital.

But in many cases it's been doing... done in a way that is actually more harmful. It seems more harmful than beneficial because you're normalizing behavior that's not secure. And you're welcoming, you're also welcoming them [00:15:00] to the whole. world of the internet in a situation where one person can't manage it all.

The teacher can't realistically manage all those kids where, you know, if it's a parent and the parents can take care of their few kids at home. So it's a really risky situation. It's a, yeah, it's, it's, it's not easy. Is there any like techniques that you've realized work to help, I mean, move forward and in terms of understanding other than just sitting there and explaining?

In this sense, you have to be quite well [00:15:30] informed. You have to be able to think on your feet, uh, which, what you're describing, I'm not sure that everyone would feel comfortable doing that. No, I think the most important is to teach them, to make them aware of the risks, and give them examples. If I give them examples of what can happen if you're, if you're not taking care of your digital footprint, what are the possible consequences?

And give them real life examples. And like I told my kids, I say, okay, oh yeah, but you know, if I'm posting this on the internet, it's no problem. Okay, it's no problem. [00:16:00] Then just give me your phone, unlock your phone and let me look around in your phone for half an hour. No, no, no, no, no, no, you cannot. No, no, this is no, no, no, because I have sent messages to, to other kids and say, yeah, but you see, this is maybe you have nothing to hide, but there are a lot of things you do not want to share with other people.

And you have to think about this. And for the tech world, of course, this is, this is a huge investment. If they can have the kids already from their young age, well, um, tracked and then looking what they are doing, it's very easy to afterwards build [00:16:30] a nice profile about the person and then what they can target them with afterwards.

Of course. I think so too. I was just thinking about that yesterday. Honestly, obviously everyone's talking about TikTok right now because TikTok was closed. Uh, we were recording this a few days after it was closed for like 12 hours in the U. S. and I was thinking the power of influencing from a young age if you have their data and you're collecting it even from school devices.

I mean, basically everywhere they go. And then they get on [00:17:00] social media, then it's very easy to actually influence their whole life view and their opinion. And I love your example about, you know, take the phone, give me your phone. Um, I've heard that from other privacy experts, that that's the one thing that youth really understand.

But about privacy, it's the same thing as like unlocking your phone and giving it to your parents. Yeah, it's a really risky situation. I really hope that that we wake up slowly as a society and [00:17:30] start to really work together and make the tech in schools work properly because that's the basis that they're getting for how, what responsible use is.

That's it. The only thing is to educate them and to, to show them how it should be done and start with the basics. And don't, don't share anything what you don't want to see on the front of the newspaper. Don't just log in with a simple password. Don't use the same passwords everywhere because this is still a thing.

People are still using the [00:18:00] same passwords everywhere. Use a password manager, multi factor authentications, all the basics, which are, for some people it's, um, it's very complicated. Yeah, I know, but think about it for, it's for your own good. It is. Thank you. And I think that's the perfect way to close for anyone who has tech in their schools or who are parents, please try to get the schools to do it in a way that respects the basic, [00:18:30] as you just described, the basics of data security.

We have to teach them that from the very beginning. We have to respect that, even if it's inconvenient, it's so important. Like, another example I'm giving to people is something, it's not related to schools, but it's like, um, it's the cameras that are popping up everywhere, I don't know, but Belgium has one of the most dense eye and pair camera systems in the world, so they are everywhere.

And they were sold in the beginning under the eye, but we are going to catch [00:19:00] terrorists with them and heavy criminals and they fight this. And then it started, I have what we will also use them for this and we will use them for that and maybe if you don't pay your insurance, we will catch you and And on the end, it's like, yeah, you're using them for everything, but nobody can really say what they are using them for.

And then we got on the elections a few months back. You could do like a, uh, a voting test. We had a bunch of questions, and then you had to answer them, and then the, uh, the algorithm was telling you, Okay, from the answers you gave, [00:19:30] This party seems to be matching with your position. It's just a questionnaire.

It's not like, uh, not, not a fixed thing. It's a question. And they clearly said, okay, this is an indication. One of the questions was for your own safety. We want to put more cameras in your street. Do you agree? Yes or no. And then most people said, yes, of course I agree. And I told people, I'd say, okay, but I can change the question in such a way that you will answer no. If I, if I'm telling you okay, we want to put more cameras in your street to improve your safety, but [00:20:00] maybe in two years we will also use the cameras to, to give you a fine if you are putting your, your garbage outside a few hours before the, uh, The set moments, because you cannot put your garbage outside in the evening.

It has to be on in the morning, things like this. So I said, okay, if you put it too out to outside too early, we will fine you. Yeah, no, of course we don't want that, but this is what's happening. People, governments and communities, they will always find an excuse to use the cameras for more and more and more and more.

And that's the [00:20:30] slippery slope, which is. It's creeping in and it's uh, before you know it, it's not going away. I'm telling them, okay, you go to a, to a mall and you're looking for a new, let's say a new laundry machine and the sales is coming to you and say, okay, this is my laundry machine. These are the options.

On the end of the day, say, okay, thank you very much. And I will think about it, and you go home. Now, in the evening, the salesperson is on your doorstep, ringing your Aya, did you think about the laundry machine? Yeah, first time you say maybe, okay. Next morning, seven in the morning, he's there again. [00:21:00] For three weeks, he's there three times a day.

People are not going to accept this, eh? But people are accepting if you, if you, online you're looking for a laundry machine, and automatically for the next weeks, you are getting nothing but commercials about laundry machines, eh? People are just accepting, you see, it's like, ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, it's, I just, it's just clicking it away.

Yeah, no, it should not be there. Should not be, let's try to use a more privacy friendly browser that's doing less tracking. So it's blocking all these creepy things and helping to improve your, uh, your privacy that [00:21:30] way. Yeah, I love, yeah, that's a really perfect example about the trash in the street.

That's, it's actually true. That's not some kind of dystopian. That's something that's already happening. I read about a venue, I think in New York, that they have facial recognition cameras, and they actually use it to people who are banned and they're banned because of where they work. Like there was a story of a [00:22:00] woman who, whose boyfriend bought tickets for a concert and they couldn't get in because she was recognized as working for some law firm that was suing the venue.

So this is insanity. Yeah, it's insanity. These things actually happen. And you know, just going back to the basics of school, if we Start with complete lax security, complete lax privacy, [00:22:30] because as you say, they're not old enough to understand it. First of all, they are. They understand a lot more than, than we think.

And second, that's just a small trigger that in the end will lead them to getting fines for the trash and for not being let into venues. Yeah, no, no, that's it. Yeah, thank you. Actually, it's really inspiring every time I see parents who are just putting their neck out like that. And I hope that if I get in this situation, I also have the courage to do it as [00:23:00] well.

But yeah, we need to do it for our kids, right? No, that's it. That's it. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. We encourage all parents and loved ones to ensure that the digital footprints their children create at school are treated with the respect and care they deserve. If your school or area hasn't yet leaned heavily into technology at school, we hope these stories will help you ask the right questions when they do.

If you have a story to [00:23:30] share, would like more info on these issues, or would like to contribute in any way, please contact us. Together we can make a difference in safeguarding our children's digital futures. Digital [00:24:00] dominoes.