Microsoft should disappear from online lessons, the data protection officers of some federal states recommend. The risks are unacceptably high, warns Stefan Brink from Baden-Württemberg, for example. In Bavaria, too, the video conference program Teams is to be replaced by a program that is compatible with data protection. But many students do not want to leave teams and therefore start petitions to keep the software. For example Pascal Braun, a vocational student from Karlsruhe. When he has collected 10,000 signatures, the 23-year-old wants to speak to data protection officer Brink about his concern. He is still missing about 2000 autographs.
SZ: Mr. Braun, your petition says that a ban on Microsoft products would throw everyday school life back into the Stone Age. Is there really nothing in between?
Pascal Braun: Of course there is something in between. But I want to draw attention to something else with the wording: Many teachers, students and parents have been using Microsoft Teams since the beginning of the pandemic. You have dealt intensively with the program and learned how to use it. That was often very tedious. A ban would mean that this effort was in vain.
What would be so bad about any other program?
Schools that have adapted to teams would have to work with a new, unknown tool in the coming school year. And as we know from the past, it takes time for everyone to master the program. In addition, all accounts would have to be re-created and administered. During this time, the quality of education declines. Data protection is not unimportant to me, but currently data protection takes priority over education. Both have to be reconciled. This requires pragmatic solutions.
What could these look like?
For example, my school uses pseudonyms. This means that neither the real name nor the private email address of the students are stored in the Microsoft account. Instead, the school gives each student their own email address. It consists of abbreviations and a combination of numbers. Implementing this is really not a big expense for the school.
Pascal Braun, 23, attends a vocational school in Karlsruhe. The other day he was unable to log into an online exam because the program went on strike.
(Photo: private)
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But does this mean that the school is fulfilling the data protection requirements?
That can certainly be argued. I am convinced, however, that this type of pseudonymization complies with data protection regulations. Because there is no personal data in the account. However, the state data protection officer is concerned with something else. For him, the problem lies with the metadata. For example, recording the time a teacher writes a message to a student. However, Microsoft only gets to know the event and not what is in the message or who is involved. At least the students should have a problem with that. Look how many people open Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp during the break. These apps actually collect personal data. For me it is simply incomprehensible that large German companies are allowed to use Microsoft while they want to forbid the school from doing so.
There are alternatives to teams. Or are they just too bad?
When the pandemic started my school used programs like Moodle and Big Blue Button. This led to problems: students could not register, others were thrown out of class or suddenly had no voice. In May 2020, the school management switched to teams. So far, this has worked as smoothly as possible. But I will give you another example.
With pleasure.
For further training, I have to go to another school that still uses Moodle and Big Blue Button from time to time. We had an online exam two weeks ago. It was supposed to start at 6 p.m. and was scheduled for an hour. There were already problems with the registration. We had to start half an hour later. However, the time window was already running and the program automatically closed the exam at exactly 7 p.m. So we were missing half the time. Fortunately, they all passed anyway.
With the end of the pandemic hopefully not too distant, won’t the discussion about Microsoft products become superfluous?
My school has stored all of the school year data and teaching materials within Microsoft programs. And many teachers from other schools have told me that they want to continue to rely on teams to exchange ideas with one another. So that is clear: I am not interested in Microsoft as a company, but in ensuring that lessons can continue smoothly in the next school year. It doesn’t matter which programs do this.
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