Surveillance is an invisible presence in the modern classroom where technology, in particular digital technologies, take an ever more central place in teaching and learning. Surveillance is visible and invisible; it is visible in the ‘privacy policies’ of big corporations and behind the ‘I accept the terms and conditions’ button on every app. It is invisible from most of the conversations between teachers and students, or between parents and the school, and in general when talking about digital technologies in the everyday life.

A good example of the visibility and invisibility of surveillance in education is in the Privacy Terms of Google:

Here Google is explicit about the high level of surveillance all its customers undergo when they use any of its services, whether it is a private email account, cloud storage or online documents to the GSuite for education used by more than 80 million users worldwide (Vamvakitis, 2019). However, how many of us actually stop and read the terms and conditions of every app we use? Surveillance culture can be said to be a side effect of ‘digital modernity’, where “surveillance culture is formed through organizational dependence, political-economic power, security linkages, and social media engagement” (Lyon, 2017). Surveillance culture is so embedded in our way of living that is very easy to forget its presence.

Users are faced with the choice of taking part, or not, in the modern digital life. However, this freedom of choice is slowly fading as technology becomes an essential part of modern living, where, for example, having an email account is essential when opening a bank account, in most work environments and businesses, when studying, travelling, having a mobile phone, and almost everything else I can imagine. Joining the digital world barely seems optional.

This freedom of participation, or lack of, is not given to students. Schools and educators create the expectations of learning in the classroom and select the tools needed to fulfil those expectations. If a teacher requires students to submit their assignments through a particular online platform, such as Google Classroom, Turnitin or Classcraft, what options do students have? If a university research project is carried out in Google Cloud, how can students make sure they are still owners of their research and innovations? Google’s Privacy terms apply to high school students and university researchers alike.