Project Red

I'm wondering why I see ed tech leaders advocating the use of tools and services that clearly violate COPPA and/or CIPA law. Twitter is a great example. The Terms of Service for Twitter clearly states that in order to have a Twitter account you must be of legal age to enter into a contract in the United States. In most states that is 18 years of age. One of the greatest obstacles we face in our district is teachers wanting to use sites that clearly state in the Terms of Service that their service is for users over a certain age. We have spent a great deal of time educating our teachers to check the TOS before they use a Web 2.0 tool only to have them say "well other districts are using it."

Scott

That's a great question. I know of quite a few teachers using Twitter with their students. I'm going to show your question during our first implementation webinar today. Hopefully, it will generate some responses.

Other examples include the use of VoiceThread and a number of Web 2.0 tools with Lower School students. Most require either a student email address for setting up accounts and the kids are under 13, or an alternative process where the classroom teachers have to create and manage all of the accounts, which isn't feasible for us. We've tried communicating with parents as to our interest in getting their approval to use web tools with under the age of 13 students and found a few parents greatly opposed to that.

How are any of you getting around that, or should we? I really dislike the "Catch-22" we are putting our teachers in, especially after they get really excited about the possibilities the Web tools provide.

We've applied to eRate to pay for Gaggle for student email communication. We recently adopted a law in MO that limits teacher-student digital communication. It was (incorrectly) dubbed the Facebook Law thanks to the media. So, for a time we had to hear about all of the teachers who've interacted inappropriately with students via email and texting. Of course those things happened, which is wrong. But educators do need to communicate with students outside of the walls of school. As a result of this law, our district approved Gaggle student-teacher digital communication. This is the actual bill: www.senate.mo.gov/11info/BTS_Web/Bill.as...&BillID=4066479. Only the first section of this bill addresses the student-teacher communication.
If you haven't heard of Gaggle, or haven't seen their updated features recently, they offer email, digital locker, social wall, calendar, chat, assignments and more...all within Gaggle world. It also has a filtered Youtube called Gaggle Tube. Our Gaggle world consists of only our district, and in the elementary level, access level is set within the school. Their tech support and PD are excellent. They do data integration and have a human monitoring system to make sure we are secure and using Gaggle appropriately.

I am wondering how districts are addressing COPPA and CIPA rules that require students and teachers to know about Digital Literacy. I have been guiding my districts to Common Sense Media's online materials and lessons, but is anybody out there addressing this in a different way?

I contacted www.ftc.gov/ about GAFE and COPPA violation threats by one of our parents. A FTC office called me back and said, "Public Schools are exempt from COPPA law if they are non-for-profit. COPPA law does not apply to non-for-profit." That being said, he did recommend best practice was to obtain parent permission for any child under age 13 to participate in Google Apps for Education (GAFE)