Start with a Question

This article is cross-posted from the Student Privacy Compass   and was originally published there Oct. 27, 2020 On July 22, Juliana Cotto, a policy fellow on FPF’s youth and education team, spoke with Kerry Gallagher, Assistant Principal for Teaching and Learning at St. John’s Prep and Director of K-12 Education for ConnectSafely.org , about training teachers on video call platforms, how school leaders should work with teachers in adopting new tools, and important considerations for monitoring student behavior and engagement. Juliana: What are lessons learned from online learning last spring? How should they inform preparations and operations this fall? Kerry: A new privacy element is that through virtual classes, we see into students’ homes. The majority of our students participated in virtual classes from their bedrooms because that was the one place in their homes they could focus. It wasn’t ideal to teach students in their bedrooms, but we needed students in a place where the...

 Now that we are using more education technology tools than ever in order to reduce contact and reach students and families from a distance, the concern about the private information we are creating and sharing in the course of our work with young children is as much of a concern as it has ever been. In a time when teachers are eager for training and support, but have little time to dedicate to it as they learn how to plan physically distanced, hybrid, and virtual lessons;  How do we make sure they are aware and able to implement important student data privacy protection practices?  How should policy makers support schools and districts?  What can school and district leaders do in their roles to keep students safe and teachers supported? I was fortunate enough to be part of a panel of researchers, practitioners, and policy advisors last week to talk about the solutions to these very questions. You can watch our conversation below. To open the panel, new research abou...

In every school community there are a handful of great teachers – the teachers who are passionate about their students, experts in their content, and beloved by the families they have served – who are also kind of scared of technology. Either they have little experience using tech in their personal lives and therefore do not see how it applies to the classroom, or they have been burned by bad technology rollouts and learned to rely on their tried-and-true non-tech strategies. No matter the reason, they are great teachers and there is a way to change their experience with technology to benefit both them and their students. Often it is up to the instructional technology coaching staff to help facilitate the transition. Here are a few tools and strategies that I've seen work, and that might work for you. Traditional Teaching Strategy: Slide Decks Gateway Technology Tool: Pear Deck Especially at the secondary level, teachers have relied on slide decks to structure lesson instructio...

On Friday, The Hill again published one of my op-eds on the role of technology and the importance balance with student data privacy that continues to be discussed by policy-makers, parents, students, and educators. In this article, I encourage interested parties to engage teachers and school and district administrators in the discussion. They will find out how students' privacy is being safeguarded, while students are still benefiting from utilizing powerful technologies in the classroom. Click here to read the full op-ed.

Student data privacy is an arena of education that is both daunting and exciting. Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University recently published " Student Privacy: The Next Frontier ."  Professor Urs Gasser and Fellow Paulina Haduong , among others, undoubtedly put incredible research into this project. Their work included reading proposed policy, talking with experts in law, classroom practice, and policy writing, and much more. Their report led me to start thinking about how the discussion needs to continue. It also needs to be balanced with all parties maintaining an open mind of both the benefits and risks of collecting and analyzing student data. Why is student data daunting? In a reality where data breaches are regularly in the news (see Home Depot and Anthem ) there is understandable concern from parents and educators about whether the personal information of our children could be compromised. Edtech companies collect and store informatio...

If you are reading this blog, you surely know that I am an educator who sees technology as an opportunity to open up the world to my students, to connect them with content and experts not available at school.  On the other hand, it is important to teach them how to responsibly and effectively leverage technology so they are both learning and protected. A passion I have been working to share lately is to allow students themselves to have a voice in the digital citizenship discussion. ConnectSafely has invited me to write for them and add to their rich collection of posts from experts in safety, security, privacy, digital literacy, and bullying.  I'm honored to contribute.   Click here to read my first post about publishing student work online.

The opinion piece originally published by The Hill was reposted today by EdSurge .  My hope is that this small article will continue to circulate so that lawmakers, policy advisors, parents, and students can consider the educator voice in the student data privacy conversation. Given other recent articles, such as this one in the Washington Post  and this one in EdWeek  the discussion is heating up.  It is essential that we protect our children's privacy while still making it possible for educators to access formative data that informs instruction and allows for personalized learning. This important conversation must continue in a meaningful way that will lead to best practices everyone can agree on. June 2015 Update The op-ed from The Hill was cited in a whitepaper from The Center for Democracy and Technology .  You can download and read it at Privacy and the Digital Student .