5 Essential Tips to Protect Your Student Data Privacy

The rapid advancement of technology has made it easier for students to protect their information and engage with their teachers in class thus making learning easier and efficient. Technology has made it easier for teachers to collaborate with their students during sessions.

When using education technological tools, you have to collect the relevant student data so that you can tailor your teaching techniques accordingly. With the student information on your hands, it is your responsibility to ensure that students’ personal information is kept safe and secure.

Not only is it your responsibility to keep the information safe and secure but also showing your students how to keep the information secure. One of the best ways to guarantee safety is by being safe on social media, download from authorized sources and update your software and apps regularly. Here are five ways to protect student data privacy.

1.      Safety on social media

Creating and maintaining a professional social media account is one of the best ways to keep both parents and your colleagues about what is happening in the classroom. This means that you’ll have to review the privacy settings of your social account to make it as private and secure as possible.

For instance, if you have a Twitter account, you can set it ‘protected’ so that only a limited number of people can have access to your tweets. If you are using Facebook, you should look at the privacy controls regularly and make the account visible to your friends only.

Finally, when sharing photos related to your class, you should use a photo editing tool to hide the faces of your students and other information that can reveal who they are. There are other free apps on the store that you can use to hide information and enhance student privacy such as Luna.

2.      Education technology tools should be encrypted

When you visit an educational site to get trustworthy custom assignment help, you should ensure that the data is stored and transmitted safely and securely. To do this, you need to ensure that the URL has the letter ‘s’ after http. If not, you should look for an icon that secures the link in the URL.

This way, you’ll be sure that any information stored in the website is safe. On the other hand, it is not easy for a user to know if a phone app is encrypted. The good thing about Apple devices is that they guarantee student data privacy by forcing the user to communicate using https unlike Android which is not guaranteed.

3.      Check the tool’s privacy policy

For every technological device or app, you use, you have to check if the privacy policy is in place. This means you’ll have to read through the policies to find out if the student data privacy is protected. Teachers are very busy people.

Reading the privacy policies will definitely consume a lot of time. To avoid wasting time, you need to use the tools that have been tested, verified and reviewed by specialists in the education sector. For instance, one of the most trusted and secure tools that enhances student data privacy is Classtime.

4.      Be clear with your students and parents

Being clear with students and parents makes it easier and convenient for you to gain their trust and keep their confidence. Before the semester begins, you should list a number of tools you’ll be sued in class to make it easily accessible to parents. You should also link the privacy policies to enable parents to review them.

5.      Plan for mistakes

Mistakes do happen from time to time. It’s important to tell parents how they will be informed when protected data is misused or breached. Will you contact them directly? Will they get a letter from the IT department? You should also provide a number of solutions in case such an event happens.

Conclusion

Student data is one of the most sensitive types of information we have today. It the duty and responsibility of educators to protect student information at all costs. The rapid advancement of technology has also brought about an increase in cyberattacks and crimes.

It’s very important for educators to do their best to protect their students’ privacy. They can do this by limiting their social media accounts, using encrypted tools, reading the privacy protection policies and planning for mistakes in advance. With the five ways discussed above, educators will be well equipped to handle any problem that arises in future.

Bio

Joshua Robinson is a professional writer and editor. He loves sharing his insights on education and the future of technology on his website regularly. During his free time, you’ll find him playing with his children or riding a horse.