The Balance Between Student Privacy vs. Continued Instruction
By: Julie Daniel Davis
Tags: Video Conferencing, Edtech, Distance Learning, Education, Student Privacy

Finding the Balance between Student Privacy and Continued Instruction

As an educator who has been striving to encourage integration of voice assistant technology in the classroom setting over the last few years, I find the current paradigm shift of educating k-12 students from a distance quite fascinating. I believe I have probably spent more time studying student privacy laws due to researching the feasibility of using Alexa in the classroom than most of my IT counterparts as a rule. While I am no lawyer and I did not sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I want to share my thoughts on student privacy during COVID-19 social distancing.

First, there are 3 main laws that I feel impact the broad spectrum of students regarding student privacy: COPPA, CIPA, and FERPA. Each of these laws were put in place to protect the rights of children. Each of these laws serve a purpose that makes sense, but these laws have not kept up with the current technological availabilities. Therefore, it becomes hard for school districts to discern what truly is ok or not ok to do to support learning with the latest technological innovations. Discernment over what is a PII (personally identifiable information)is becoming harder and harder.

Enter COVID-19. With social distancing a requirement, educators and school systems are now looking for ways to continue educating students without the luxury of being face to face. Educators around the world are now using various video-conferencing platforms to continue to meet needs. I can definitely say that our school system is learning and adapting as we go based on student/parent feedback, researching good practice, and discerning if the things we are trying are truly working.

When we first told our teachers they could use Google Meet to conference with students I had no idea just how many conferences I would see happening. I assumed we would choose to be mostly asynchronous in our delivery of instruction but many of our teachers are choosing synchronous options throughout the day.

There has never been “such a time as this” and I think it is important to remember that technology professionals have to do a risk analysis on any platform, curriculum shift, or tool that our schools choose to use. At this point, the desire to continue instruction overrides some established norms for many districts. I will say that from this point forward, we have decided that our responsible use policy (technology covenant) will include phrasing that “the school will possibly be using video and voice recordings for educational purposes.”

Here are things we are adjusting and recommending as we move forward:

In any video conference that is being recording, students must be made aware of this upfront.

If educators are conducting one on one video chats, these chats are to be recorded. We already have physical school rules about one on one conversations happening in open areas, not behind closed doors, etc. While support might be a one to one video chat right now, setting the safeguard of recording those conferences is important. I would also suggest that schools create documentation of the why behind this. Why are you recording these meetings, how are they being stored, who has access to the meetings, how long you are going to save the meetings.

Sharing virtual meets. Many teachers are choosing to teach lessons synchronously during this time. I would suggest that if you are recording these sessions to share with families that might have missed it, change the camera view to just you so that you are not recording student faces during these sessions (especially if students are under age 13).

Make links to video-conferencing private. There are new phrases being thrown around, “zoombombing” is one. To protect your students from unwanted spamming, keep video conferencing links within your school’s domain as much as possible.

Explain to parents and students the importance of not sharing these videos with others. This protects student privacy as well.

Our current “classroom” never existed until “time such as this.” Meeting curricular and social emotional needs in a virtual way never existed for most of us. We are now in the throes of mandated distance learning. Adjusting and creating new expectations based on shifting sand isn’t an easy task for many people but flexibility and adaption is important as we press forward in finding best practice solutions.