What opportunities and risks does the use of learning platforms and educational apps entail?

Checklist supports educators in a (self-)aware approach to digital technologies

The digitalization of education is the central education policy issue during the coronavirus pandemic. On this occasion, the network initiative UNBLACK THE BOX has published an “alternative checklist” for the use of digital technologies in the education sector, intended to contribute to a broad examination of the opportunities and risks of using learning platforms, educational apps & co. Paula Bleckmann from Alanus University is one of the initiators of the initiative. “Many other checklists ultimately already anticipate the outcome. They are only concerned with the manner in which the demanded increased use of digital media is to be implemented. An elementary school that resists tablet classes is automatically dismissed as Stone Age-backward,” says the Professor of Media Education. The alternative checklist is different and better: “It leaves the ‘whether’ and the ‘how’ open. If an elementary school teaching staff uses the alternative checklist to make the same decision quite consciously and with justification after intensive examination on a wide variety of levels and after weighing all the advantages and disadvantages, then that is a modern, media-literate decision,” concludes the expert in media education and media addiction. The checklist can be found at https://unblackthebox.org/die-alternative-checkliste/.

UNBLACK THE BOX is a network initiative founded in 2019 by researchers from education science, sociology, educational informatics, media and health education, and philosophy, as well as by teachers at schools, universities, and teacher training institutions. The initiative aims to enable people working in education to respond to the increasingly demanded digitalization of educational institutions during the coronavirus pandemic in an informed – and reflective – manner.

The “alternative checklist” on the digitalization of education is the latest project of the network initiative. It contains 12 guiding questions intended to serve as fundamental orientation on the topic of digital technologies in the education sector. For each of the questions, the members of the network have developed informational material. How transparent is the modeling of learning software? What data does it collect and transmit? What are the backgrounds, motives, and interests of EdTech or educational technology providers? What types of learning are promoted by the use of learning software, and which are made more difficult? And what health risks does its use entail? On these and other questions, the “alternative checklist” contains concrete case studies, further reading recommendations, and practice-oriented questions. With its low-threshold information offering, which requires no technical prior knowledge, the checklist is aimed at all people in the education sector.

Further information about UNBLACK THE BOX is available via the initiative’s website or newsletter.

Graphic: “Creative Commons” by UNBLACK THE BOX / Manja Förschler. License: CC BY-ND 4.0