Head-worn cameras and optical implants are arriving in classrooms without anybody deciding that they should. That was the starting point of a one-day workshop held by the Centre for the Ethics of Perception on 14 March, with teachers and head teachers from eleven schools in Oxenfurt and Novigrad.
Participants described a pupil whose implant, prescribed for low vision, could not be switched off; a visiting speaker who wore recording glasses throughout an assembly; and a school that had learned only from a parent that a supply teacher’s implant kept images. Most schools represented had a policy on mobile phones; none had a policy that covered a device a person could not take off.
The workshop’s report, written with the participants, recommends that schools ask visitors whether they wear recording devices, as they already ask about other matters of safeguarding, and that makers be required to say plainly what their devices keep when the wearer is not recording. Its findings will feed into the Centre’s project on bystanders and consent.