4 Steps For Stronger Student Data Security And Privacy: A Guide For Educators
This technologically advanced era makes it easier and possible for teachers and young learners to connect online through multiple apps third parties for learning, meetings, or even sharing ideas. When a school approves the use of technology for education, it comes up with responsibility as well. Hence, as an online ESL educator, you need to know how can you protect your students’ data along with yours.
When any school approves the use of new modern technology, the data of every student with their basic bio information has been shared with the educators and as well with the app or 3rd party online services which you are using. There’s no denying that for teachers and the education system student data is necessary so that they can work on it, to help students to improve their performances.
Student data can help in various ways, educators can curate curriculum according to it, give their parent’s updates, and policymakers of schools can make decisions for the betterment of students. Understanding the importance of protecting student data is crucial to surviving in education.
However, teachers and institutes need to take care of the confidential data of students and their privacy. In addition, according to educase.edu, there is a statistics, which show that how much students trust their data being shared with their respective institutes below.
Student Data Privacy Tips
Now, let us get to know how to protect student’s data as a teacher successfully:
Protect Student Data At Any Cost
Student shares their data in full confidence with their teacher that their data is in safe hand. So, the data of every student like D.O.B. or any demographic data of your students, any assessment results, and academic performance results should be protected and it should be the top priority for teachers.
Teachers need to gain the trust of students by showing complete transparency like by stating to them that they will be using their data for their own benefit in upcoming future. In addition, a teacher should tell their students with whom their data will get shared like their parents, teachers, or with school leaders.
Proper Understanding of Security, Privacy, and Confidentiality
Teachers must understand the concept of security, privacy, and confidentiality and how they can get applied to the data type gather from the students. Teachers, in general, collect plenty of data on the students related to their progress report, their observation of every student, grades, attendance, and test outcome.
After gathering all of the data, teachers must know how to prioritize every piece of data. In addition, they also need to keep in check that all of this data and login, and password details of every student should be kept confidential to keep all of the data secure.
Exercise Data-Securing Practices
Teachers must be sensible and thoughtful with every student's data, there are plenty of good habits while sharing data that every teacher must know like-
i. They shouldn’t share data in cloud services
ii. They should double-check with whom they are sharing data
iii. They shouldn’t download data on personal devices
iv. Lock the system when it’s not in use
vi. Share data for only educational needs.
Collaborative Effort To Secure Data
In the education system in every hierarchy, all the responsible stakeholders should play their role to secure students' data with better privacy rules.
Final Thoughts
Teaching English online with 220 hours International Diploma in TEFL/TESOL program has become a very popular career choice now. Students and their parents have faith in the education system and in their educators. Students with full trust share their personal data from their demographic data to login id and password. It’s educators and the education system's responsibility to secure their data to keep it confidential with updated privacy rules it should be used for the betterment of students' academic future and to be shared with other parties for only educational needs.
If you have, still in dilemma about how you can become a certified online ESL educator then we suggest you go through our 220 hours International Diploma in TEFL/TESOL, which makes you a capable TEFL teacher and gives you an edge over other aspiring TEFL teachers.
