Miss T had just done an exciting science experiment of making elephant toothpaste with her class and she couldn’t wait to post the pictures of the students with their colorful toothpaste on her classroom website. During dinner, she shared the idea with her spouse who casually asked whether it was OK to do so. This question made Miss T pause and analyze whether sharing this post complies with her school district’s policy and with student safety and data privacy rules.
As technology that enhances student learning experience has become increasingly common in today’s classrooms, complying with student safety laws and modeling appropriate safety behaviors have become necessary skills for teachers, trainers and instructional designers. The internet is flooded with information; however, picking the right information can be overwhelming. Following a few clear protocols can give teachers a way to decide what to trust and what to share.
Protocol 1: Protect student data and know the laws
In the United States, three student privacy laws have been enacted to protect student privacy and data security (Poggi, 2024):
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA): a law that allows parents and eligible students to have control over educational records, protecting student privacy in schools.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA): a law that focuses on safeguarding personal information collected online from children under the age of 13 by requiring parental consent for data collection.
The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA): a law that aims to protect children from harmful or obscene content on the internet by mandating filtering measures in schools and libraries that receive federal funding.
School districts can comply with these laws by having a dedicated person who knows the laws and policies and can vet any digital tools before allowing teachers to use them in classrooms (Thompson, 2023). Teachers need professional training in laws and school policies, and they need to understand the nuances of every tool they introduce in their classrooms. With this background, Miss T can check her school district policy and quickly decide what can and can’t be shared on her website.
Protocol 2: Manage what you and your students share
While sharing information online in the form of blogs, social media posts, photos, wikis, or videos, teachers can use the following checklist to decide whether it is safe to share the information (Higgin, 2022):
Review the school or district social media policy
Get parent or caregiver consent and keep a private list of students who opted out of sharing their information
Check whether the post identifies anyone and whether it advances learning
Check photos for background details and blur or crop sensitive information
Avoid name tags, school logos, student handwriting and personal details such as addresses and birth dates
Share student work through classroom-only tools such as a learning management system (LMS)
When Miss T applied this checklist, she quickly realized that she needed to edit her photos before sharing them on her website. She also decided to manually check the consent forms for every student visible in her experiment photos.
Protocol 3: Everyday digital habits
Awareness about online safety can be built through everyday classroom discussions, project work or digital literacy curriculum. One of the tools students can use to practice caution while posting anything is the THINK acronym (Purdue GEER, 2022):
T – is my content true?
H – is my post hurtful?
I – is my post illegal?
N – is it necessary to post this?
K – are my words kind?
Miss T decided to model these steps during her next class so that her students understand how to use them effectively. In addition to the THINK acronym students can use strong passwords and multifactor authentication, avoid suspicious links and public Wi-Fi, and back up data while working online (Hall, 2024).
Protocol 4: Teach and guide students
Teaching online safety is an ongoing, evolving and complex process. As new tools are introduced every couple of days, teachers need to find creative, age-appropriate and engaging ways to teach internet safety behaviors. Teachers can build interactive lessons, get parents involved, use real-life examples, facilitate classroom discussions and create a safe environment for students to practice these skills (Hall, 2024). It is also important to highlight and model when and how to ask for help when something feels uncomfortable (Lcom Team, 2024).
How I will model these behaviors
In my work as an instructional designer, I will apply some of these strategies to protect my digital footprint and model safe behavior for the learners I design for:
Keep professional and personal accounts separate
Use the THINK acronym before posting anything online
Follow my organization’s policies which are built on the three student privacy laws before sharing any student information online
Vet the digital tools I use in my designs and prototypes for safety and data privacy
Always get parental consent when working with minors.
If these protocols are followed diligently, teachers and instructional designers can help ensure that their students’ and users’ privacy and data are safeguarded. When Miss T applied these protocols, she decided to blur sensitive information and keep student faces out of view to share the pictures through school LMS with parents and fellow teachers.
Teachers, instructional designers and trainers need to put effort and thought into these protocols to ensure student and user safety. Taking the right steps early can prevent potential problems later.
- References
Hall, C. (2024, July 22). A teacher’s guide to Internet safety in the classroom. Mobile Ed Productions. https://www.mobileedproductions.com/blog/a-teachers-guide-to-internet-safety
Higgin, T. (2022, September 16). Keeping your students (and yourself) safe on social media: A checklist. Common Sense Education. https://www.commonsense.org/education/blog/protecting-student-privacy-on-social-media-dos-and-donts-for-teachers
Lcom Team. (2024, October 19). What is online safety? Definition, risks and tips for students. Learning.com. https://www.learning.com/blog/online-safety-definition-basics/
Poggi, N. (2024, June 27). Student privacy laws: Protecting confidentiality and rights. Prey Project. https://preyproject.com/blog/three-laws-that-protect-students-online-data-and-privacy
Purdue GEER. (2022, September 19). Cybersecurity [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM62bca9Kn0
Thompson, R. (2023, March 15). 6 steps to protect student data privacy. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/protecting-student-data-privacy/