Q
Please can you advise where I can find information regarding the use of apps to share photographs?
A
An excellent question! You will need to check the detail of where information is stored for the apps concerned.
Photographs are classed as personal information, because they represent information that can be related to an individual. In common with any personal information relating to pupils, photographs of pupils should therefore only be stored on platforms that conform to EU data protection standards (the servers are in the EU). If the company is a .com it is probably based in the US and using servers also in the US. This probably means it does not conform to EU standards. (Any claims under the ‘Safe Harbour’ scheme have been ruled meaningless by the EU. ) In short, personal information should not be stored on servers in the US. Furthermore, you will need to check the terms and conditions of the app to ensure that ownership of the material does not pass to the company when it is uploaded.
What does this mean in practice?
1. Use Hwb wherever possible. It is very capable now, especially with multimedia.
2. Use apps that only store data on the device, which can then be uploaded to Hwb and deleted from the device. There are many good examples such as ‘Explain Everything’ and ‘Do Ink Green Screen’.
3. If information is stored on servers in the US, the data should be at the very least anonymised. So use pupil initials instead of names. However, even this should be done with great caution as modern artificial intelligence software can piece together incomplete information to accurately create a profile of a user. (Most of these companies collect location data for this purpose).
Take for example the use of Plickers, a US based app which easily lets pupils in a class respond to multiple choice questions. It’s a nice app becoming popular in secondary schools especially. However, some schools have used it with named pupils, which is definitely inadvisable. Also bear in mind that over time it is able to grade pupils by ability relative to one another, so it has some potentially useful commercially valuable information. If those pupils are registered in several classes, it can work out who the brightest ones are across a broader population. Whilst the terms and condition of Plickr specify they will not release personal information to third parties, the lack of any obvious income stream begs the question of how they make money – what is the business model? So what happens if the company gets sold? Well, the information passes to the new company and there of course is potentially a clue. Some companies create a useful tool to acquire a database of useful information (and remember this is information about our children) and it is this that they are bought for.
The privacy policy of Plickers is at https://www.plickers.com/privacy for info.
So my advice is that we should be cautious with our pupils’ information – after all, it’s their futures that these companies are trading. Incidentally, any apps I train with are those that conform to the guidance above.
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