[we sort of warned about this when universities in Australia hooked up with Google as an email provider. Now Microsoft is doing the same through outlook.com accounts (melbourne PC user group is moving to that one; I've decided to give it up as a result). I wonder if schools in Australia are following suit and if there has been any analysis as to the legality.]
Immense Unease Over Advertisers Nabbing Student Data: Poll http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/student-data-privacy-poll_n_4640688.html Posted: 01/22/2014 12:01 am EST | Updated: 01/22/2014 12:59 am EST As technology continues to seep into U.S. classrooms, an overwhelming number of parents and others worry that children's private information may not be secure. A whopping 89 percent of Americans reported they are "very" or "somewhat" concerned about "advertisers using personal data about children to market to them," according to a nationally representative survey conducted by the Benenson Strategy Group on behalf of Common Sense Media, an advocacy group for children and families. The survey asked questions of 800 registered voters, including 227 parents, by phone earlier this month, and has a 3.5 percent margin of error. The poll found that while only 37 percent of the public has "seen, read, or heard" "some" or "a great deal" about schools collecting, storing and sharing information, including age, weight and grades, 90 percent are "somewhat" or "very" concerned about private companies having access to student data. "Student privacy and the protection of data is about to explode as an issue in the United States," said James Steyer, who heads Common Sense Media. "The numbers are off the charts. It's clear that students' personal and private information must not be for sale. Period." Over the last few years, "data-driven instruction" has become a buzzword in education, with the idea behind it included in the pitches of education technology vendors and the federal government's Race to the Top -- District competition, in which<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/22/race-to-the-top-2012-school-districts_n_1534517.html> school districts vie for cash in part by tailoring education plans to individual students (the Department used the phrase "personalized learning"). Proponents see technology that uses data collection as key to showing teachers which skills students are missing and what motivates learning. School districts are increasingly using cloud computing to store thousands of digital records for each student. Because the field is new, it's largely unregulated. Ninety-five percent of school districts in the U.S. rely on cloud computing, storing data on remote servers connected to the Internet, according to <http://law.fordham.edu/center-on-law-and-information-policy/30198.htm>recent report from the Fordham University School of Law. The Fordham paper found that only one-fourth of districts tell parents about these services and one-fifth of districts don't have policies explicitly governing their use. Many contracts between districts and technology vendors don't have privacy policies, and less than 7 percent of the contracts restrict vendors from selling student information. The agreements rarely address security, according to the Fordham research. Even advocates of increasing the use of data to inform education acknowledged the survey's implications. [snip - longer stuff at the link] Melbourne, Victoria, Australia [email protected] Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space. ~Margaret Atwood, writer _ __________________ _ _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
