Videoconferencing apps and student privacy
CPS experiment in schooling at home starts Monday
Friends, here I am again with another post and it hasn’t even been a week. But what I bring you today is important (and short) and I wanted to share it.
CPS is set to begin school again on Monday 4/13. At our house we’ve been getting caring notes from teachers and administrators both checking in to find out how their students are doing, and letting us know what school is going to look like going forward. Coronavirus schooling is sure to be an awkward process but many folks are working hard to try and get it close to some approximation of right.
Illinois Families for Public Schools has created an excellent document offering guidance to parents regarding video conferencing apps and student privacy. You can find it here.
A succinct summary of the document is offered by ILFPS director Cassie Creswell:
“Of note for CPS families: the recordings that teachers are told to make of classes held via Google Meet are part of a student's educational record if the student appears in the recording.”
Creswell believes “it's pretty poorly thought-out on the part of CPS to tell teachers to record these classes without informing them of this fact and, as a result, also advising them to minimize the amount that students appear in these recordings.”
She goes on to note that “given the huge issues with students being surveilled via their use of their CPS G Suite account, adding Google Meet data to that makes this concern loom even larger.” (For those of you CPS parents who haven’t been aware of it, your kids are location-tracked by Google whenever they use their CPS Gmail accounts.)
Regarding Zoom, technology that’s proven so insecure against trolls that New York City public schools has abandoned it, and Google has disallowed its entire work force from using the platform, Cassie notes: “In general, many schools and districts are doing the best they can to cope under the circumstances, but, even so, they shouldn't be compelling students to use technology with insufficient privacy protections (e.g. pretty much any requirement to use Zoom at this point).”
Finally, Cassie references a lawyer ILFPS has worked with on privacy issues in the past, who wants to hear from parents “interested in legal assistance to push schools to do the right thing in these cases,” or those “specifically concerned about Google's data collection and the surveillance of that data by schools.” You can connect to ILFPS here.
As this experiment gets rolling I hope to hear from CPS parents, teachers, or students who can tell us how it’s working for them. Meanwhile I hope for the best for all of us as this monumental transition takes place.
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