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Phil Taylor

The Innovative Educator: Should Smart Phones Be Banned in Schools? - 32 views

  • regardless of one’s standpoint, it is clear that no child should be allowed to use a smart phone within a school setting without signing an Acceptable User Policy.
Katie Akers

COPPA and Schools: The (Other) Federal Student Privacy Law, Explained - Education Week - 4 views

  • In a nutshell, COPPA requires operators of commercial websites, online services, and mobile apps to notify parents and obtain their consent before collecting any personal information on children under the age of 13. The aim is to give parents more control over what information is collected from their children online.
  • This law directly regulates companies, not schools. But as the digital revolution has moved into the classroom, schools have increasingly been put in the middle of the relationship between vendors and parents.
  • In some cases, companies may try to shift some of the burden of COPPA compliance away from themselves and onto schools
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  • “That is not without risk, and COPPA has a whole lot of gray area that gives school attorneys pause.”
  • Less clear, though, is whether COPPA covers information such as IP (internet protocol) address, device identification number, the type of browser being used, or other so-called metadata that can often be used to identify users.
  • some school lawyers have taken the FTC’s previous guidance to mean that their districts must get consent from every single parent, for every single product that collects information online from young children.
  • First, according to the FTC, schools can grant consent on behalf of parents only when the operator of the website, online service, or app in question is providing a service that is “solely for the benefit of students and the school system” and is specific to “the educational context.”
  • How are schools supposed to determine if a website or app is strictly educational?
  • will any information collected from children under 13 be used or shared for commercial purposes unrelated to education? Are schools allowed to review the information collected on students? Can schools request that student info be deleted? If the answers to that second group of questions are, respectively, yes, no, or no, schools are not allowed to grant consent on behalf of parents, according to the FTC.
  • Many vendors also allow third-party trackers (usually related to analytics or advertising) to be embedded into their sites and services.
  • How do schools notify parents and get their consent under COPPA?
  • Often through an Acceptable Use Policy or similar document that is sent home to parents at the beginning of the school year, said Fitzgerald of Common Sense Media.
  • Even better, Fitzgerald said, is when schools provide a detailed list of exactly what websites/online services/apps students will be using, and what the information practices of each are.
  • some privacy experts say that a one-time, blanket sign-off at the beginning of the school year may not be considered valid notification and consent under COPPA, especially if it doesn’t list the specific online services that children will be using.
  • responsibility for deciding “whether a particular site’s or service’s information practices are appropriate” not be delegated to teachers.
  • Many districts do in fact have that kind of review-and-approval process.
  • One is “click-wrap agreements.” Often, these are the kinds of agreements that almost all of us are guilty of just clicking through without actually reading
  • Herold, Benjamin. (2017, July 28). The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Education Week. Retrieved Month Day, Year from http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/childrens-online-privacy-protection-act-coppa/
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