Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Research Shows the Need for More Support to Protect Privacy and Advance Digital Equity

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) today released a new report — with accompanying survey findings — that reflect the urgent need to provide improved student privacy support to teachers, parents, and students. Almost half of teachers report they have received no substantive training on data privacy, and only four in 10 parents say their schools discussed their data protection practices. Despite that, parents and teachers report favorable opinions of the continued use of education technology even after the pandemic ends.

The report, titled “Protecting Students’ Privacy and Advancing Digital Equity,” is based on significant data collection and outlines steps education leaders and policymakers should take. These include prioritizing privacy-focused teacher training and proactively communicating with parents about how schools are protecting their children’s data. Additionally, leaders can reduce inequity through closing the digital divide while protecting privacy, and scale up the good practices of special educators, a standout from their peers, to protect all students. The recommendations were shaped by surveys and focus groups commissioned by CDT. View the findings here.

“It can be easy to overlook hard-to-see issues like digital safety and student privacy during a time of crisis like COVID-19,” said CDT CEO Alexandra Givens. “But as our research shows, safety and privacy are vital concerns, and the vast majority of teachers and parents support more online learning even after the pandemic. It’s critical that policymakers, schools, teachers, and parents work together to protect students.”…Read More

Digital rights group alleges Google invades student privacy

Complaint alleges Google collected students’ internet search requests through Chromebooks

student-privacyGoogle is being accused of invading the privacy of students using laptop computers powered by the internet company’s Chrome operating system.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, depicts Google as a two-faced opportunist in a complaint filed in early December with the Federal Trade Commission.

Google disputes the unflattering portrait and says it isn’t doing anything wrong.…Read More

5 critical student data questions for schools

U.S. Department of Education issues guidance on student data privacy, use

student-dataStudent security and data privacy are top concerns for today’s students, and now federal guidelines are helping to shed light on the often confusing issue of data security.

Speaking at the Common Sense Media Privacy Zone Conference on Feb. 24, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said keeping student data secure and using it for its intended purposes are top priorities.

To that end, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) on Feb. 25 released guidance for vendors that work with schools to store student data. Part of ED’s efforts will involve helping educators understand how technology and data interact and how privacy issues surround data issues.…Read More

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Delaware bans colleges from requiring students’ social media passwords

Both state and federal legislators have been considering a wave of bills concerning online privacy in schools and the workplace.

Should a university be able to edit a student’s Facebook profile or check his private tweets? Absolutely not, said the Delaware state legislature, as it recently passed the first state law to forbid schools from requiring students to divulge personal social media login information.

Signed into law by Gov. Jack Markell on July 20, HB309 bans both public and private higher-education institutions from committing a range of student privacy violations.

Delaware colleges and universities cannot require or request that students turn over login information, nor can they ask students to log on to their personal social networking sites in the presence of a school representative.…Read More

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Feds take huge step to protect student privacy

Lack of clarification around FERPA has created a game of ‘telephone,’ says the Data Quality Campaign.

Asking state leaders to use data to drive school improvement and innovation sounds like a logical idea, but how can they also maintain student privacy in this often treacherous digital age? To help answer this question, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) on April 7 released a few innovations of its own.

Student data privacy is not a new concern. In 1974, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was created to address the issue. But as the world goes digital, data breaches become an everyday occurrence, and ED continues to push for data-driven decision making as part of its school reform movements, it’s time to give FERPA a 21st-century makeover, experts say.

The push for a revamp comes not only from digital privacy concerns, but also as all 50 states have committed to building education data systems need to meet the September 2011 deadlines of the federal stimulus.…Read More

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Employee in webcam spying flap: Teen had no expectation of privacy

A school employee says a student had no expectation to privacy.
A Lower Merion School District employee says student Blake Robbins had no expectation of privacy because he broke the rules of the district's laptop initiative.

A school technology official at the center of a webcam spying scandal says the Pennsylvania student suing her employer should not have had any expectation of privacy, because he took a laptop home without authorization. The development comes as the district in question admits it secretly captured at least 56,000 photographs and screen shots from the web cameras of laptops it issued to high school students.

In a court filing April 20, Lower Merion School District technology coordinator Carol Cafiero said officials activated tracking software that photographed student Blake Robbins because he failed to pay a required insurance fee.

Cafiero, who is on paid leave while the district investigates the laptop controversy, claims that Robbins had no legitimate expectation of privacy because he broke the rules. She also denies claims by Robbins’ attorney that she might be a “voyeur.”…Read More

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