10 things teachers can do to protect student data

Welcome back, teachers!

Each year an increasing amount of information about your students is being communicated and stored - especially in electronic formats. You as a professional have an ethical obligation to know the laws and best practices around data privacy as it pertains to education.

Yes, I know you also have a new curriculum, five preps, two extra curricular coaching responsibilities, and a family you like to see now and again. I'll try to keep this short and practical. Here we go...

1. Always lock your computer screen when it's not being used. A simple keyboard command will lock most computers (Windows-L on a Windows PC.) If you have problems remembering to do this, set your computer to go into sleep mode after 5 minutes of inactivity and require a password to wake it up. Oh, papers with student info on your desk can be easily viewed as well.
2. Protect your passwords and change them now and again. I am not a huge fan of extraordinarily long or complex passwords or changing a password every two weeks, but passwords do need to changed now and again (once a semester, anyway) and passwords ought to be a combination of numbers and letters. Does anyone really need to be reminded not to write passwords on sticky notes placed on your monitor? Get and learn a password keeper program if you'd like.
3. Be wary of educational products that create student accounts. Be very careful when using new online products that want information so they can create individual accounts for students. Your district should have a list of programs that have been vetted by the technology department for acceptable data privacy practices (COPPA compliance, at least.) Yes, explore new programs that will aid your students - just do it carefully.
4. Store student data in the cloud. Cloud-based applications and data storage programs have a good track record for being secure. Please use GSuite or other online storage environments your district may provide. Cloud-based student information systems and learning management programs are pretty secure. Please don't keep student data on the hard drive of your laptop and leave your laptop where it could be stolen. Or on a flash or other type of portable drive. 
5. Don't post printouts with  private data in your classroom and be cautious about what you put online. Guess what - kids know each other's student ID numbers so if you associate test scores or overdue books or grades with ID numbers instead of names, you are not really honoring student privacy. This regardless of whether the data is on a webpage or a paper printout.
6. Be cautious when posting photos of your students to the web or social media. Most districts have parents who have requested that student information, including photos, not be share in the public media. You need to know which kids' faces in your class can't grace your website, newsletter, or Facebook page.
7. Only use trusted wifi connections when working with student data. I don't check my bank account from any "free" wifi services in coffee shops, airports, hotels, etc. And you shouldn't be doing school work that involves student data using those networks either. Please use our secure network here at school rather than the public wifi as well.
8. Understand the concept of spear phishing and double-check odd data requests. Get any strange requests from a colleague or administrator asking for data? Please double-check that these are legitimate. Spoofing the email address of an authority to send emails requesting data aka spear phishing is a too common practice that has caught a lot of people. Don't be a sucker (pun intended).
9. Know your district and state's data privacy laws and policies. You don't have to read the laws (FERPA, COPPA, PPRA plus state laws and district board policies) but you better know the gist of them. Do you know what is considered PII - Personally Identifiable Information - in your district?
10. Help your students understand what they can do to protect their own privacy. Sharing passwords is a common practice among younger students (and probably a few older ones). Every teacher should be addressing Digital Citizenship in her/his classes and protection of and respect for the privacy of others is a critical part of these instructional efforts.

A good resource to learn more about how you as a teacher can help safeguard your students' personal data is ConnectSafely's The Educator's Guide to Student Data Privacy. Put it at the top of your professional reading list.

Informing parents - how much info is good for kids?

 

Our school is in the process of reviewing Internet filters. Since the last time I engaged in this process, the feature set offered by many filters has increased dramatically. If you think all your filter does is keep users from getting to bad websites, you might be surprised.

Today's filters, besides blocking, can also monitor and track individual user's Internet access. If so configured, the program will alert an "authority" if it detects someone spending too much time looking for information about suicide or firearms or radical organizations - places that might indicate some form of adult intervention is needed to prevent a young person harming her/himself or others. I understand the intent, but I also wonder about the accuracy and privacy implications.

Impacting an even larger percentage of our students is the ability of a filter to analyze, summarize, and report Internet use by students. A weekly report can be sent to parents that tells the most often used search terms, most often used websites, and the amount of time spent online. All stuff a "good" parent* to should know and be able to use to help guide their children.

Getting realtime information about one's children from data kept by the school has been around for what, 15 years? Most student information systems have a "parent view" portal that allows parents to see attendance, grades, assignment completion, etc. (We enabled it in my previous district in 2005.) Access to test scores, bus location, hot lunch purchases and other data are increasing as well. At the time, I saw both the advantages and the abuses in real time monitoring of student performance by parents. (Parent portals - are we encouraging helicopter parenting?) Parent access to student data has become such a common expectation now that I doubt any district could seriously discuss turning it off. 

My primary concern about filter reporting is that students will figure out how to bypass the filter (they are very, very good at that) or simply limit their use of the school Internet to school uses. (Which is, I suppose, what many educators would like to see happen.) For our students who may not have a second, less monitored, means of accessing the Internet, a new inequity will be created. Exploring interests about which one wishes to be remain private (sexual identity, careers, religions, diets, etc) will be much more difficult for these kids.

I find it somewhat ironic that we as adults tend to make a very big deal about our personal data privacy yet we do not honor it for our youth. Yes, we need to guide and we need to restrict or monitor when needed. But we also need to give kids some independence and the chance to make some choices on their own. Mistakes will be made, for sure, but often it is the mistakes from which we learn the most.

* I've been asking myself what the definition of a "good" parent might be. Who writes that definition? On what is it based? Do any parents who have children who productive members of society qualify as "good" parents? Can you be a "good" parent but still have children who make mistakes or may not live up to societal expectations of success? 

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Are you motivated more by fear or opportunity?

First a short preface to writing what will probably turn out to be a curmudgeonly post: Social anthropologist Jennifer James explains why old people often have a "the world's going to hell in a handbasket" mentality. At some point, we recognize our own mortality and we find the fact we are going to dies easier to acknowledge if we think we are leaving a world that is getting worse rather than getting better.* 

Is it just me, or are our politics being driven increasingly by fear as opposed to opportunity?

• Fear of immigrants
• Fear of rural whites
• Fear of other countries' economic policies
• Fear of losing our middle class
• Fear of LGBTQ rights or lack thereof
• Fear of losing reproductive rights
• Fear of losing privacy
• Fear of not having medical insurance or a fear of others getting undeserved medical coverage
• Fear of governmental overreach or governmental impotence
• Fear of Russian meddling
• Fear of fake news and alternative facts
• Fear of technology in general, especially AI

And the list could be continued...

Our opinions and actions seem to be driven completely by the possibility of something bad happening as opposed to the opportunity to make something good happen. This does not feel like the country in which I grew up and have been working for 40+ years.

Is fear driving our decision-making in our schools (including our school libraries and tech departments) as well? (Better to overfilter than underfilter. Better not risk having students take devices home. Better pull back on ordering library materials that may be controversial. Better to stress in digital citizenship classes the dangers rather than the creative and constructive uses of the Internet.)

The leaders I admire most are those who move us with the desire for improvement, with forward movement, with new opportunities. I want to think, despite being a geezer, that this is still happening in our profession. It is opportunity that motivates us.

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* And there are some definite advantages to getting older, believe it or not. Update to my 2012 list:

• If one enjoys seeing the beauty and grace of young people, one's definition of "young" encompasses a vastly larger percentage of the population.
• There are fewer and fewer "hills worth dying on" at work. That leaves one time and energy to engage in the important things. 
• One can relax knowing that one's potential for becoming a professional athlete, musician, or porn star are long past.
• It's a pleasant change to worry more about the lack of time than the lack of money in one's life.
• In athletic activities, one doesn't have to finish first, just finish, for people to be astounded.
• It's fun to tease peers about all the mailings they're getting from AARP.
• Shoes can be purchases based on comfort, not looks. (Oh, I guess I have always done that.)
• One word: Grandchildren. Relishing watching babies grow into fine young adults.
• With all one's own children over 21, one is responsible only for one's own mistakes.
• One is expected to complain about one's aches and pains.
• Understanding the joy of downsizing - possessions, clothes, housing, and obligations.
• Realizing even if you could magically be 20 years old again, you wouldn't do it.

So far this aging thing, I'm happy to say, has been a lot more good than bad. I hope to be a problem to others for at least another 20 years or so.