LAK11 : Where do we find good critiques of learning analytics?

George Siemens started the discussion in LAK-11 with both a post and a forum.  This post is in response to his question.

I’ve come to the preliminary conclusion that because the field is so new-especially referenced by the exact phrase “learning analytics”– that there probably aren’t a lot of good critiques.  However, if you consider one (ugly step?) sister from standardized testing – or  google “critiques of standardized testing”  there is a plethora of critiques and opinions.  Let’s try to ensure that learning analytics does NOT follow the mis-steps of standardized (mandated) testing.

I found one recent federal government publication(abstract) or (pdf) that attempts to report about the use of Educational data at the Local Level.  It focuses a lot on “data-driven decisions” and claims to address local uses of educational data from accountability to instructional improvement. The closest the article comes to critiquing the analytics is by addressing the "barriers to use" of the data.  These

LAK11 Week 1: Playing with Hunch

I’m probably just as paranoid about privacy issues as anyone else in my generation, but I found that if you do a little exploring/digging  you can actually create an account in hunch that is NOT linked to your twitter or facebook accounts.  In fact , all you really need is a valid email address, and you can skip divulging  the rest of the information they ask of you to create an account.