National education blogger Diane Ravitch fueled a debate after she wrote about a little-known research initiative by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which awarded grants to university researchers to test the feasibility of having middle-school students wear biometric wristbands that would attempt to measure their emotional responses in real time during class. The foundation’s hope was that teachers could use the data to help them assess how engaged their students were in class, but many teachers found it an unnecessary intrusion into student privacy.
Analyzing Trends with Tim Stock 