Education Week published an insightful article about the dangers to student privacy during this time when students are relying on tech products to connect to teachers. Read it in full if you have a subscription.
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/03/26/massive-shift-to-remote-learning-prompts-big.html
Massive Shift to Remote Learning Prompts Big Data Privacy Concerns
By Mark Lieberman
Schools are confronting a wide range of potential problems around student data privacy as they scramble to put technology tools for virtual instruction in place during extended school building shutdowns.
Teachers have already begun connecting with students using a variety of digital tools, some of which are new to them and their schools and weren’t designed for classroom use—everything from videoconferencing apps like Zoom to digital devices like Chromebooks and learning platforms like Babbel and BrainPop.
An unprecedented number of online interactions between teachers and students from their respective homes introduce new privacy questions that lack easy answers. And at least one state’s governor, aiming to speed up implementation of new remote learning tools, has temporarily waived legal requirements for agreements between school districts and technology companies that typically include student data privacy provisions.
The challenges for schools in staying abreast of privacy concerns have become acute as companies have begun offering temporary free subscriptions to their expensive tech products, said Antonio Romayor Jr., chief technology officer for El Centro Elementary School District in California.
Some teachers in his district have begun bypassing the typical vetting procedures for new tech products by adding the free products directly to their single sign-on platforms for students and teachers to use, he said.
Some of those free products could eventually cost schools and parents money, which means anyone using them should be extra careful about offering credit-card information when signing up, Romayor said. Programs that aren’t vetted in advance also might run afoul of privacy policy. “It’s a constant struggle,” he said.
While the new technological landscape for schools feels unprecedented in many ways, schools still have an obligation to inform parents of how their students’ data is being used, even if the teaching is occurring outside school buildings. Federal laws—such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)—should help guide school leaders in deciding what new technologies to use.
“The rules, the regulations apply whether the student is actually in the classroom physically or is at home being taught through a distance learning framework,” said Linnette Attai, president of the for-profit education company PlayWell and a close observer of student privacy issues.
Student privacy experts are recommending that school districts take a deliberate, rather than frenetic, approach to adopting new technologies, and guard against overinvesting in new tools before being fully aware of how they work and how they could jeopardize students’ data privacy.
Cheri Kiesecker, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Data Privacy, wants parents and schools to minimize as much as possible the amount of student data that’s being collected and sold by tech companies. She felt the same before the COVID-19 outbreak.
In fact, Kiesecker points to a 2018 warning from the FBI noting that the consequences of ed-tech companies collecting too much data on students “could result in social engineering, bullying, tracking, identity theft, or other means for targeting children.” Most U.S. states earned a “C” or lower grade from a 2019 survey of student data privacy protections by Kiesecker’s organization and the Network for Public Education.
As schools rush to put remote learning programs in places, Kiesecker argues that those student data privacy problems could get significantly worse. And that could have long-term consequences for many students. “Data is actually your identity and a form of social currency,” she said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I looked up ZOOM on Wikipedia because I didn’t even know what it was (it was mentioned in an unrelated article).
“What a boom ZOOM is,” I thought, at first. After giving a short history of the company, the article talks about some of its privacy issues. Some of the things ZOOM can do, take-from, and put into your computer, are downright frightening. CBK
A Utah Republican Party meeting on Zoom was taken over be open the other day. Teachers need to be careful.
Zoom is under investigation by the NY State Attorney General for invasion of privacy
A teacher can’t even make a video of a classroom without having the permission of all the parents of students whose faces are shown.
But Zoom has close-ups of all the students involved without any such permission required.
We don’t need any “investigations” to know there is something seriously wrong with this picture.
someDAM . . . and we know from watching Zuckerberg of Facebook fame how long good written policy lasts. CBK
SERIOUSLY wrong
I’m sure teachers are inundated with “advice” and don’t need more but my son’s math teacher is sending them a voice file with her explanation of the assignment. I heard parts of it last night when he was listening to it.
That seems like a relatively low tech way to approach it. Record and send it to them. He listened to the whole thing and it was fairly lengthy. They may not need – or want- all the bells and whistles.
Of several community websites designed for art educators nut the national professional association, only one person has raised the issue of privacy. That happened when an art teacher posted on ZOOM a photo of her entire class with the names of each student in plain view.
I have developed a habit of looking at both the privacy and terms of service for all of the websites I am fond of. One of these, POLITICO, dumped 593 links to ads on my computer. I have the exact count because I copied the list and put into an Excel worksheet. And that is just for starters.