Privacy and distance learning in turbulent times: a comparison of German and Israeli schools during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic

The social distancing and lockdown measures enacted to address the COVID-19 pandemic entailed an unprecedented shift to digitally-mediated communication. The move to remote learning at schools was one of such important changes. Drawing on privacy and STS literature, we investigate the role of different privacy cultures during the initial moment of turbulence, when schools had to quickly adapt to remote teaching. To this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with teachers in Israel and Germany. Our interviews carved out three distinct phases: A moment of turbulence, a period of negotiation and a phase of temporary closure, leading to the dominance of Zoom and Google Classroom in Israel, and government-mandated open-source tools for German teachers. These different pathways are shaped by considerations of vertical privacy among German teachers, and the absence of such considerations on the part of Israeli teachers.