Blog for Week 6--CIPA/COPPA

CIPA/COPPA

What are your thoughts about CIPA/COPPA?

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Both the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) are important government protection laws that guard children’s safety while using the Internet. My school does take these two laws seriously. The technology consortium that my school belongs to has a tech come out once a week to address technology issues. He asked that I did not use his real name so I will refer to him as Kris. Kris was kind enough to answer a couple of questions about this topic. He said that since the school received E-rate and the goal is to protect the students, filters and firewalls are in place. Kris went on to say that one of the protections students have is the school generated Gmail accounts with the school domain. The permissions are set high, meaning that students cannot send to or receive emails from anyone who does not have a @stwilliamschool.org domain. In the students' case, their email has a different domain, but I would rather not list it here for public view.

Teachers can request for a website to be blocked, but as far as I know, that has not happened. As a sixth grade classroom teacher and fifth grade social studies teacher who has a set of Chromebooks in the classroom, I am constantly prowling with a purpose when my students are using devices. We do not have a system in place like Go Guardian that helps to reduce the sites students access during school. If my school had the budget for it, I am sure we would have something in place. For now, it is up to the students to act responsibly with digital content and for the teachers to monitor student activity.

Although the Internet is full of positive sites for students, it is very tempting to stray away from a task. Take for me for an example, while I was working on this post, I stopped several times to check Facebook and play a couple rounds of a silly game to break the stress of having homework, papers to grade, and lesson plans to write. I am glad that there are laws in place to protect children but seeing that the CIPA Act has not been updated since 2011 is surprising. New websites and advances in technologies are being created and released at an alarming rate. I understand that it is difficult to keep up with all the trends in technology, but when it comes to children I really feel that our government needs to do a better job with updating policies, such as CIPA and COPPA on a regular basis.

Do you think they do enough to protect children?

I alluded to this question in the last prompt with my comments about CIPA and COPPA needing to be updated more frequently in order to keep up with or at least be more current with emerging technologies.

With this question, I thought about the sites my students use on a regular basis and how they signed up to use them. Everfi is a site that came to mind as a one I would recommend to educators to use with their students. I included the link in case anyone is interested. When students register at this site they are asked for a class code, and then they are asked if they are 13 years old. If a child is not, then only the first name of the child is required. I reviewed Everfi’s privacy policy and the policy is clearly stated what data is collected, what is stored and not, and how it is used. My students also started using Google Computer Science (G CS) this year. Just like Everfi, I had to set up a class first and then I was given a class code. When my students used the code to sign in a generated username and password were generated. If a student forgets the information, a new account needs to be set up. G CS does not ask for a student’s name or email. The teacher does have an option to type in the student’s name in the teacher dashboard. I did do this just so it was easier for me to see who is struggling with coding and who is progressing. What I learned is when I got home and logged into my dashboard, all the names I typed at school were gone. After a little investigating, I found out that even though I typed the names on my teacher laptop, G CS does not store student names, but they are stored only on the device where I typed them. I thought, wow, that’s great security.

Now for the other side. Until now I have not thought other sites that I use with my students where all they need to do is sign in with Google and they are in. No questions asked about age, just click sign in with Google, click allow, and that is it. Granted, the sites are all educational sites and the students are connected with a class code or invite to join, but it seems like this is a go-around of the law. Has anyone else run into this situation?

Do you think 13 is the proper age that CIPA/COPPA should target?

“Research shows that it takes children about 12 years to fully develop the cognitive structures that enable them to engage in ethical thinking. Before 12 it’s difficult, if not impossible, for a child to fully grasp the impact of their actions upon others, online or otherwise” (Graber, 2014). Here is a link to the Graber article. As someone who teaches eleven and twelve year old students, I can easily see the difference in decisions and maturity in my students. Then when puberty hits, from experience that starts as early as December to March, my sweet students become completely different people. So to answer the question about the age of 13 as a proper age to target; I say yes.

Does this mean that my students are avoiding YouTube due to their age? No! I asked my students who have a YouTube account and fourteen out of the twenty students said they had one. Out of those, who asked their parents for permission? The answer is a big fat zero. Why? They all lied about their age to have an account. This does not surprise me, but I do wish there was something more that could be done to reduce the dishonesty regarding age.

My next thought goes to parents. Are the parents okay with this behavior, are they pretending there is not an issue, or do they just not know? Considering the R rated movies the parents have taken their own children to see, I tend to lean towards the answer that parents are okay with their child being exposed to content that is not meant for children. How in the world is a teacher supposed to deal with that?

What about Danah Boyd's comment that COPPA teaches kids to lie?

YES! Just from my own student’s comments, there is no consequence for lying about their age. I do believe that digital citizenship needs to be taught at schools and it would not hurt to have a digital citizenship night to educate parents. Keeping up with how quickly new devices and websites/apps are released is like trying to herd kittens, but we still need to try to educate our students and parents, when possible about responsible use with tech.

Okay, it is now time for me to step off my soapbox and tuck it back into the closet.

Alpana. (2018, June 27). Keep Your Child Safe By Learning About The Internet. Retrieved from https://mommyonlineblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/27/keep-your-child-safe-by-learning-about-the-internet/

Graber, D. (2014, December 08). 3 Reasons Why Social Media Age Restrictions Matter. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-graber/3-reasons-why-social-media-age-restrictions-matter_b_5935924.html