Building Cooperative Digital Spaces: Privacy, Choice, and Community in Educational Technology

How do we build educational technology that serves liberation rather than surveillance? This session explores “cooperative digital organizing. “Creating community-controlled spaces that prioritize privacy, consent, and collective decision-making over engagement metrics and data extraction.

Drawing on the Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age’s transition from academic organization to cooperative network, we’ll share what we’re learning about how educational communities can reclaim digital sovereignty. We’ll examine our journey from Google Workspace and social media to privacy-first tools like Nextcloud, Signal, and self-hosted alternatives. Not as technical solutions, but as pedagogical choices.

We’ll explore together:

• Privacy by Design principles for educational communities
• Tool choice as curriculum—how platforms shape learning relationships
• Cooperative governance models for shared decision-making
• Consent-based participation honoring different comfort levels
• Community care infrastructure supporting sustainable organizing

Through case studies from our migration away from extractive platforms. What’s working, what isn’t, what we’re figuring out. We’ll collaborate on creating resilient, trust-centered digital communities. Come ready to share experiments, challenges, and questions about building educational technology serving the community rather than capital.