Privacy and Confidentiality in the Educational Setting

Instructional Setting and Audience

The instructional setting is in a public third grade classroom with 26 students. The school qualifies as a title one school is 80% of the students are on free or reduced lunch. Grades K-6 attends the school with around 525 students in the school. There are three classes of third grade students. In each classroom, there are three student computers and a teacher computer connected to a projector that project to the front of the classroom. The school consists of mainly Caucasian. There are also several Hispanic students. There are only a small percentage of other ethnic groups in the school. Due to the district’s policy, the exact percentage may not be included. In the school, there is also one computer lab that each class attends once a week for an hour. At the school there is also a media center that classes attend once a week for 30 minutes.

Ethical Reasons for Privacy

The first reason for ethical privacy is to protect children from predators. Teachers need to make sure before posting on the internet that a student’s rights and personal information are not given and permission to post is given by the parents. The teacher should never post a student’s full name or picture on the internet. At the beginning of the year, parents are to sign a form in which they give permission for student’s name, student work, and student picture is or is not allowed to be posted on the internet. This form then goes into the student file. This form is to be signed each year by the parents. Students need to be taught the danger of giving personal information to people online.

The second reason for ethical privacy is to protect students from having others log in as them. At the beginning of the ...

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...l permission to view the file.

Both students and teachers are given username and passwords to log into computers. For students the username is used for their lunch account to help keep the confidentiality. Parents have a username and password so they can get online at anytime and look at their child’s grades and lunch account. The importance of keeping username and passwords confidential are stressed to all at the beginning of the year.

Works Cited

Clark, S. G. (2001, April). Confidentiality and disclosure: A lesson in sharing. Principal Leadership: High School Edition, 1(8), 40-43.

Darden, E. C. (2009). The good, the bad, the ugh. American School Board Journal, February 2009, 46–47.

Toglia, T.V. (2007). How does the family rights and privacy act affect you? Education Digest, October 2007, pages 61–65.

L. Duncan, personal interview, May 6, 2014