Our team technology of choice is Jigspace, which in the most simplistic terms can be described as an augmented-reality (AR) presentation tool. After trying some tutorials and basic interactions with Jigspace, I decided to looker closer into the application’s origin, funding, and privacy/data terms of service (TOS). These were some specific topics I was particularly interested in through Selwyn (2010) describing the need to inquire on the connections between educational technologies (edtech) and how the interact with the real world economies, networks and society overall.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic there was explosive growth and interest in educational technologies due to the necessity to socially distance. Highlighted by Williamson et al. (2020) edtech saw $16 billion dollars of venture capitalist (VC) investments in just 2020. This figure alone builds on the concern of “private control in public education” Williamson et al. (2020).
Digging around some of Jigspace’s blog posts and community forums I was able to find an interesting connection. I haven’t drawn to any conclusions with this finding, but it definitely caught my attention. Jigspace received $1.4 million dollars in VC seed funds in 2020. One of the major contributors of these funds is a US company called General Catalyst. General Catalyst has over 1,000 active investments in various early-stage and growth equity investments. One of those investments happens to be a payment solutions application called Stripe ( large competitor to Paypal and Square). When browsing through Jigspace FAQs, one point asks about how is payment information stored? The explanation was “JigSpace does not store any of your credit card information on our servers. All payment processing is handled by Stripe”. DUN DUN DUN! Is this a conspiracy? Not likely, but an interesting connection and quite likely a purposeful partnership.
There is another layer of consideration on this connection with Stripe. In Jigspace’s privacy policy they have some easy to read bullet points, but they lack detail when you want to more critically examine them. One section highlights how Jigspace shares personal information and there are 3 bullets that likely allow Jigspace to share personal information with Stripe. Jigspace can disclose information to:
- “Other companies in our group of companies” which depending on equity splits may involve several VCs including General Catalyst which has equity in Stripe.
- “Third party service providers and collaborators who assist and enable us to use the Personal Information to, for example, support the delivery of or provide functionality on the Services, or to market or promote our Services to you;” Since payments are through Stripe this would likely be considered needed for functionality.
- “Other people where we have your consent.” You likely give consent during the transaction process.
This is one of several branches of deep diving I’ve found so far and would love to hear what others think! As I’m not a lawyer and these are private companies it can be quite a challenge to know exactly what’s going on and their ambitions. That being said the purpose of venture capitalist investments are always to trade capital (money) for potential growth in equity (owning part of the company with expectation of expanding its value).
References
Selwyn, N. (2010). Looking beyond learning: Notes towards the critical study of educational technology. Journal of computer assisted learning, 26(1), 65-73.
Williamson, Ben, Felicitas Macgilchrist, and John Potter. “Covid-19 controversies and critical research in digital education.” Learning, Media and Technology 46.2 (2021): 117-127.DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2021.1922437
Zac, Williamson is a good source for ed tech research, particularly in the area of how private financial interests are rapidly working on defining the future of technology in education as a very lucrative business. As you’ve described, many of these companies are not at the core education companies, but, rather, technology companies, simply choosing education as an investment opportunity. Behind them, as you can see, are layers of other companies with their fingers in a variety of pies around the world. The question becomes: what value do many of these companies want to extract from educational institutions and students beyond the revenues they receive for the basic product and/or service? How does this play out in the learning setting? You have lots to explore here.
Augmented reality and tools such as Jigspace are growing in importance in education, and increasingly designed to be used by a broader range of educators and designers than before where a lot of technical expertise is limited. While exploring Jigspace, I suggest seeing it not as the sole focus of your study but as an example of AR use in education. This opens up a broader range of inquiry as to some of the fundamental underpinnings of the technology writ more broadly, while still allowing you to focus on one example.