COPPA - Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

As the school year ramps up, our department has been busy creating a training module on COPPA and protecting students online. This is a module that all teachers in our District will be taking this year (and likely every year going forward), thus denoting a significant shift in our District's messaging about tech integration and student safety.

As part of this module, we created a short video using Adobe Voice that explains COPPA. (You can read more about Adobe Voice in my previous post.) Our goal was to help teachers understand COPPA without boring them with a lengthy written explanation. Hopefully, our little video is less dry than the alternatives....


Similar to other districts, ours has struggled in years past with finding a balance between protecting student privacy and empowering teachers to use professional judgement when selecting sites for instructional use and creating student accounts.  This year, the Responsible Use Agreement that is part of our Superintendent's Policy includes changes that allow the District to consent on a parent's behalf when a website seeks to collect the name, District-provided email address, and/or birthdate of a child under the age of 13.

This change allows our teachers to easily use sites with kids that require individual student accounts, so long as students and parents have signed this agreement and the site does not collect more than name, email, and birthdate.

If a site needs additional information (such as gender, location, etc.), then teachers send home an opt-out permission form with the site's information, purpose, and what data it collects. If parents do not want their students using the site, they notify the teacher.

We are hopeful that these changes to the Superintendent's Policy will help free teachers to find and implement the best online tools and resources to support their instruction.

 How does your district handle the creation of online accounts for students under 13?

Comments

  1. Hi - this is great - would you mind sharing the policy with me? Our district is going overboard in my opinion..
    Thank you..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sure, here you go: https://www.adams12.org/files/dms/5035-102113.pdf

      Delete
  2. Hi Anna, great piece. Would you share the Adobe Voice training material and / the policy settings? Thank you. - Susan S.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sure! The Adobe Voice video is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4u1aEDHmGQ, licensed Fair Use.

      Our Superintendent's Policy can be found here: https://www.adams12.org/files/dms/5035-102113.pdf

      Delete
  3. Hi, thanks for sharing, our district is looking at rewriting our policy for this, is there anything you could share with me that you or your district has done? I clicked on the links to your district policy and they are not there anymore. Can you send me an updated link? cwturner@gaston.k12.nc.us. Thank you. Christy Turner

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi,

      Glad you found this helpful! Our district just updated our website this year. I've fixed the link, but here's a few that may be helpful:

      Student Use of District Technology and the Internet (Superintendent Policy): http://www.adams12.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/5035-102113.pdf

      Our department's website information with more information on COPPA and related resources: https://sites.google.com/a/adams12.org/itls/home/coppa-website-permission-form

      Feel free to use/adapt any of the materials our department created, just please cite appropriately. :)

      Delete

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