Privacy and Safety

Privacy and Safety

Privacy and safety: “Why

“In loco parentis”—meaning in place of the parents. Teachers fill this role daily for their students. In this role, teachers and school officials are responsible for their pupils during the school day. We are de facto parents for the majority of day for our students and we are entrusted to protect them while we educate them. Some people might argue that we should not “worry about protecting the privacy of our students when they are at school, when reduced privacy is a fact of modern life and our students better learn how to handle it.” I would argue that we have a legal obligation to protect our students while they are in our care. In fact, I liken it to the same amount of vigilance a parent must have when their child has a sleepover with another child. Your guard is up and you pay, perhaps, more attention to what is going on in your house. In my “house” (Dundee-Crown High School) I must be vigilant for my visiting “children”. They are my responsibility. Many districts have AUPs in place to address many situations where privacy may matter. Included in this may be publication authorization for the district—allowing information to be published by the district in newsletters, on websites, and the like. This is an important thing to consider in our society where there may be custody issues with students in your district. Federal regulations mandate that web-surfing is filtered in schools. In addition, preteens are barred by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act from using interactive communication without parental permission (Aftab, 2004). With the boom of cloud tools, how many teachers stop to ask for permission before launching web-based projects which may compromise privacy? Kay Vandergrift ponders what our data collection really means when it comes to privacy issues. She worries about how electronic records can affect students later in life as these are easy accessed and are widely available. Fortunately, many...

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