A day in the (datafied) life: Digital education platforms, commercial infrastructures, and the (im)possibilities of disconnection

In classrooms, schools, and homes around the globe, digital education platforms are becoming increasingly vital partners in preparing, conducting, monitoring, and evaluating formal educational encounters. In Denmark, as well as many other spaces of formal education, the swift and extensive efforts to digitalise educational practices, institutional administration, and other aspects of schooling have availed a series of questions pertaining to the material and micro-political effects of imbricating public education with commercial digital infrastructures that operate beyond the auspices of democratic control. This chapter combines thick descriptions of school life with (big) data on user tracking to unravel a day in the life of teachers and students intertwined in the digital economies of commercial platforms and datafication. Weaving together accounts of the (datafied) school lives of two individuals – a teacher and a student in Denmark – with visualisations of data flowing from individual and collective devices to platform owners and thirdparty corporations, we discuss the implications of an unchecked, continuous, and increasing influx of digital education platforms in public primary education as well as the (im)possibilities of disconnecting from the hyperconnected school.