Recently, I had an educator ask me if students
collaborating together on an assignment, through a collaborative technology
such as Google Docs, could be a violation of the Family Educational Rights
& Privacy Act, which most of us know as FERPA.
Their concern was that as students work together, one student’s parent would be
able to see the work done by the student their child was collaborating with on
the assignment. This has never occurred to me as a concern, but it certainly
begged investigation. After reviewing many websites, I did not find anything
that would suggest a homework assignment in progress would at all be considered
an educational record (and therefore protected by FERPA), as it is not part of
a child’s permanent record at that point, nor is it in possession of the school
at that point. In fact I did not find anything definitive that would suggest
student work is FERPA protected at all. Graded work MAY be, as an individual
grade itself might be part of the student record. But from the United States
Supreme Court “Owasso Independent
School District v. Falvo,” it is clear that an ungraded
assignment is not an educational record, and therefore not subject to FERPA.
The above is my interpretation and not a legal opinion, but it demonstrates how
delicate the topic of student privacy is becoming. Increasingly, student data
and privacy are being looked at with a laser focus by places like the State of California,
President Obama,
and organizations like Common Sense Media
and CoSN.
Expect to hear many more discussions and questions about what student data is
shareable to further a student’s education and what data must be protected by
schools and third parties.
I came back from TCEA, underwhelmed, not by the myriad of great presenters, but by vendor product offerings. Where were the companies transforming education and interconnecting systems so that educators can leverage multiple platforms as needed to help provide a better more integrated learning experience? Most of what I saw was just incremental improvements of existing products. While there were some standouts, I was not wowed.
I came home to beautiful warm weather over the weekend and decided to
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| Endomondo |
work off too many conference calories by exercising. I thought about how technology has transformed fitness for me in the past couple of years and it struck me that other industries are embracing interconnected app and data ecosystems much faster than K-12 Education. I use an app called MyFitnessPal to track weight, calories, exercise and more. I chose this app mainly because of its very robust third party integration. It integrates with Endomondo, which I use to track running, walking, and cycling. So I donned my bluetooth headset, which allowed me to play cloud streamed Spotify music, while I biked many miles be tracked by GPS on Endomondo. At the end of the ride my ride data was automagically synced from Endomondo to MyFitnessPal, allowing me a seamless experience that made working out a less taxing more enjoyable experience. That is what is needed in education. We need products that integrate easily together and provide students and staff enjoyable and powerful educational experiences.
We are seeing more companies do this. Products such as Google Apps for Education, Schoology, and Edmodo, just to name a few are working on app ecosystems so staff and students can easily integrate apps and data for a seamless and more productive learning experience. We need a lot less siloed products that are hard to manage and do not share data and functions with other apps or systems. Am I wishing for too much, or do our students deserve this?
This blog entry is cross posted with the great folks at SchoolCIO
