Digital Smarts Blog

A recent survey from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) reports that the the majority of parents feel the technology provides key benefits to education, including communication and learning support. The survey, conducted this summer, found that data privacy was a "mid- to low-level" concern among parents, outweighed by the quality of their children's education. Yet many parents surveyed said they are not aware of the legal rights for protecting their child’s data privacy, nor of the technology plans in place in their child’s school or district. 

“Parents see themselves as responsible for children’s privacy, even though they report feeling ill-equipped to manage it,” says Elizabeth Laird, senior fellow of student privacy for the Washington, D.C.-based CDT. However, Laird notes, the legal framework in education does not allow for any control or input from parents. Schools are the ones legally responsible for protecting student data.  Further, the more parents learn about student data privacy, the more concerned they become, the survey found. And parents of elementary school-aged children, African-American parents, Hispanic parents and those with higher incomes report higher overall concern for this issue than other parents. Interested in finding out more about what responsibility schools have for preserving students’ data privacy? Check out this primer on the key points of the Family Educational Rights And Privacy Act (FERPA).

With remote learning, school districts are reporting more ransomware attacks. Brett Callow, a threat analyst for Emsisoft, says the cybercriminals are changing tactics, threatening to publish employee’s private information online and demanding amounts more than $150,000 instead of just a few thousand dollars

The Insider Intelligence U.S. Digital Trust Survey found that, ranking nine social platforms, consumers have the most faith in LinkedIn when it comes to security, community, ad experience and relevance and overall legitimacy. Pinterest earned the second spot, followed respectively by Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook.

Students who are sticking with distance learning while some of their classmates return to school may be missing out, as teachers have less time for Zoom sessions and other remote instruction activities, some parents and educators say. Parent Jessica Savage says her son, who is in special education, has struggled with reduced interaction with his class, and school board president Michelle Fullhart says that she is concerned about equity for students who remain 100% virtual.

Parents are concerned about an uptick in social media use among children during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a survey done in the Spring of 2020 by Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. More than half of the 2,900 parents surveyed said they think social media negatively affects children, for reasons inclusing bullying, hate speech and being too sexual in nature. Claire Coyne, a pediatric psychologist at the hospital, says that in spite of these concerns, social media use does teach teens how to self- regulate. Coyne reminds parents to keep the conversation going and monitor your teen’s mood. She says this is critical in helping kids develop good habits and safety when it comes to social media.

The pandemic has forced school cybersecurity to encompass a much wider landscape than school campuses, and education leaders should get all the help they can, security expert Evan Francen writes in a recent commentary. He recommends enlisting students’ and parents' cybersecurity help through workshops, informational resources and contests.

Many schools are requiring that students have their webcams on for remote learning, but some kids would benefit from a relaxed policy, some educators and parents say. Students can view themselves as well as their classmates and may become self-conscious, for example, and may be better able to focus with the camera off, asserts Erika Bocknek, a Wayne State University associate professor of educational psychology. This web cam approach to learning may be keeping kids safe from getting COVID-19, but it doesn’t come without its own set of new concerns, including privacy, equity and bullying.

Learning online can cause students to feel anxious, worried or tired – something being called "Zoom fatigue" -- says Brenda Wiederhold, a licensed clinical psychologist. As it turns out, live Zoom calls aren’t as live as we think they are. In an interview, Wiederhold says that our brains pick up on the fact that what is happening in a Zoom call is delayed -even if for just a millisecond – and our brains look for a way to overcome the lack of synchrony. There is also a tendency to multitask as we are always looking around the screen, searching people’s faces for cues as to how they are feeling or what they might be thinking. All these heads floating on the screen can also trigger a type of fight-or-flight response in the brain.

As if you needed any more reasons to wish 2020 was over, the cybersecurity folks have even more for you to worry about. Tens of thousands of web domains related to the coronavirus pandemic are being created daily, reports ZDNet's David Gewirtz, who gathered several more unsettling statistics. Nine in 10 of those new domains are related to scams, including the intention to distribute malware, sell fake cures for COVID-19, and pass on more misinformation about the disease and other issues in the world.

Students are at risk of digital eye strain during remote instruction, says Dr. Steven Rhee of Hawaiian Eye Center. Rhee suggests that students take a screen break every 20 minutes, for at least 20 seconds. He calls it the ‘20-20-20’ rule - for every 20 minutes up close, take a 20-second break and look at an object that’s at least 20 feet away. That’s sound advice for anyone staring at a screen for hours on end -- students, teachers or parents. Frequent breaks may be a tough ask sometimes, though 20 seconds is generally enough time out. The ciliary muscle is what helps eyes focus on objects at different distances, and too much use leads to that eye strain. The good news is that pain or discomfort felt in the moment is not permanent, even with children in the virtual classroom. But it is something to add to your list of things to remember to do!

When schools abruptly closed and shifted to remote instruction in the spring, Paget Hetherington, vice president of marketing at Gaggle, found changes in students' behavior stemming from increased stress and hardship from the coronavirus pandemic. Gaggle is a digital platform that monitors content on school-owned devices and applications for indicators of potentially harmful behavior. In an interview, Hetherington says the platform detected increased digital device use after school hours and a 21% increase in explicit content - sexual photos, pornographic images or threatening sexual assault - among minors. There was also an increase in kids reaching out to their teachers and students in their classes to report abuse in the home during the pandemic. Students reported abuse by parents, caregivers, and others -- even siblings. Four of the five highest weeks of reported abuse occurred from mid-March to mid-May. Imminent threats, defined as a life in danger or threat to the well-being of a person, increased 79% compared to previous weeks in the year when students were in school. While critics sometimes worry about the role that Gaggle and other companies have in violating student privacy, Gaggle does not monitor students’ personal email or social media accounts. Gaggle only monitors information posted and written using school computers and school-provided G Suite or Microsoft Office 365 accounts, including Docs, Email, Slides, Calendar, Hangouts/Teams, Yammer and so forth. Gaggle also has a track record of lives they have saved through their monitoring process.

Zoom calls, Slack pings and email, tweet and social media notifications… they can all drag down productivity. While an article from Fast Company  outlines 4 things you can do to better manage cascading amounts of communication is written from a business perspective, there are still some lessons here for all of us, including children, on becoming more conscious of how we are using and overusing our digital devices.

Twitter plans to label or remove misleading tweets that undermine confidence in the US election, starting in mid-September. Tweets with false or misleading information about alleged election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying or premature election results all fall under the new rule.

Screen time expectations have changed since spring, with more schools holding classes online full time and creating rules about clothing, attendance, and camera and microphone use. Kids used to crave screen time, but experts say they are now getting burned out by it. Alix Gallagher, director of strategic partnerships for Policy Analysis for California Education, suggests some ways schools can use screen time in ways that offer meaningful engagement for students and some ideas for helping kids and parents cope. Screen time has literally gone from sin to survival time.

Teachers who are trying to recreate learning in a physical classroom during this virtual change from “normal” school are finding that it just isn’t the same. But what about discipline during virtual learning? During remote learning, educators should focus on teaching and supporting students, and not on disciplining them, writes Aaricka Washington, an education reporter and former educator. Elizabeth Hanif, a high-school math teacher on Long Island, asserts that some class Zoom rules were not necessary and advises that educators form relationships with students to change behavior. What is your school doing about discipline during virtual learning? What do you think should be done?

No one wants to imagine that a predator will contact your child. But it's also something we need to prep our kids for if they're going to be online. How do you start that conversation? Check out this list of conversation starters and possible answers to kid’s questions. For example:

Ask your teen: What should you do if someone you don't know contacts you online?

Best answers:

• I wouldn't respond to them at all. 
• If they were persistent, I'd type, "I don't want to talk to you. Do not contact me again." 
• If they continued, I'd block them and report their user information and wouldn't respond anymore.

Facebook plans to start globally blocking or removing any content that poses increased regulatory or legal risk beginning October 1, 2020 as part of its amended terms of service. The rule stems from a proposed law in Australia forcing the social platform to pay media firms for articles but is being enforced globally, marking a departure from CEO Mark Zuckerberg's stance on the importance of free speech. It will be interesting to see if this new stance will have any effect on cyberbullying complaints as well.

Storytelling apps and other tools that use American Sign Language (ASL)can be essential for boosting literacy among students who are deaf and learning remotely, says Melissa Malzkuhn, founder and creative director of Gallaudet University's Motion Light Lab. This article lists digital resources from the Motion Light Lab and other sources that use ASL.

Psychologists and neuroscientists are concerned there will be lasting effects from the social isolation of the shutdown, particularly an atrophy of social skills, similar to what happens to hermits or prisoners. "The signs are everywhere: people oversharing on Zoom, overreacting or misconstruing one another's behavior, longing for but then not really enjoying contact with others," writes Kate Murphy in an article entitled “We’re All Socially Awkward Now.”

Gigabytes have replaced apples in math questions, and lessons on the Fourth Amendment explore digital privacy, all part of an eight-year partnership between Cyber.org and the Department of Homeland Security. The EdWeek Research Center says nearly half of 900 K-12 educators surveyed this year already are teaching students about cybersecurity, and the partnership aims to increase those numbers. Is your school using these materials?