Title: Kratos: a solution for data privacy, literacy, and student agency in a data driven school ecosystem

Authors: Velislava Hillman; Varunram Ganesh

Addresses: Berkman Klein Centre for Internet and Society, Harvard University, 23 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA, USA ' MIT Digital Currency Initiative, 245 Main Street, Cambridge, MA, USA

Abstract: Growing digitisation has made data ownership an important focus for institutions and students. Broadly, there are three issues, which require urgent attention to obtain data privacy, literacy, and utilisation. First, schools globally lack necessary frameworks for data interoperability, while maintaining privacy and control. Second, the scale, source, and nature of school data make its interoperability impractical, resulting in an inability to assess the true impact of educational technologies on learning. Third, while data supports teaching, an increasingly data-driven decision-making suggests that student participation in curriculum design becomes secondary. Finding a balance between data-driven decision-making and student voice is critical for an efficient school ecosystem. In this paper, we introduce a proof-of-concept for Kratos: an immutable decentralised data management system that enables privacy, applied data literacy while empowering students with a user interface for data governance and active participation in school processes.

Keywords: education technologies; blockchain; data privacy; decentralised data management; systems; children; young people; data literacy; data interoperability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIIE.2020.111073

International Journal of Innovation in Education, 2020 Vol.6 No.3/4, pp.184 - 201

Received: 14 Sep 2019
Accepted: 09 Jan 2020
Published online: 09 Nov 2020 *

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