Classroom Video Capture Project Proceeds With No Protocols for Security or Informed Consent

With Bill Gates's yesman, Dorsey Hopson, renewed for another term as non-educator-in-charge of Shelby County Schools, the pressure is on to expand the use of Microsoft's cloud-based technology to every aspect of schooling, from administering high stakes tests to video capture of children and teachers for teacher evaluation. 

Hopson is urging mandatory use of cameras in the classroom, even though there is no protocol in place and none planned to gain teacher or parent permission for these intrusive and insecure video captures, which will be uploaded to third party corporate servers with no guarantee of how the video will be used.

Superintendent Dorsey Hopson II said he thought that teachers ranked 1 or 2 on the district’s evaluation system—the lowest scores on a scale of 1 to 5—should be required to use Teachscape to improve their teaching practice. Mandating that the videos be required would require a change in board policy, Hopson said.

“We’ve been doing this from 2009,” Hopson said. “I think it was a good tool to introduce. But we have to be more strategic.”

Meanwhile, the Shelby County Schools will pay the Gates-connected corporation, Teachscape, $415,000 this year to advance the program across the district. With no informed consent procedures in place for parents, parents have little recourse but to sue to make sure their children's images in information are not recorded and archived by third-party corporations.

  Some propaganda from the Teachscape sight:

Tools for Video Capture and Sharing

With Teachscape's camera kits and apps for video capture and upload, educators can easily set up for and capture their own videos from the classroom.

Designed for easy video capture of small-group work, meetings, or the classroom, the optional Mini Tablet Kit and Mini Camera Kit pair with educators' own Apple devices (sold separately).

Capture and upload apps are included with Teachscape Learn and Teachscape Reflect so educators can transfer their videos to a secure platform to share, comment on, score, and create clips of videos to build their own libraries of best practices.