While new technology is a proven advantage in the world of education today, it has been raising worry among concerned parents. These parents, along with state legislators, have issues with data tracking of their children being kept and sold by the educational applications and websites used by their children's school. To ease the parent's minds and ensure students' privacy, California has passed a law prohibiting apps, educational sites, and cloud services from selling or distributing personal information on students from kindergarten through high school. California is not alone in these concerns and in government action in the category of technology in schools. Florida, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, Kansas, and Louisiana have prohibited the collection of certain data and also the distribution of personal information. This is a bold law in the face of the ever changing contribution of technology in education. It is to be noted that it directly coincides with the increased usage of learning apps that have promised academic improvement for today's students.
The author wrote this article to the general public to shed light on the activism in the legal area of our students' technological privacy these days. In recent years, internet safety has become a focus of our teachers' and schools'. Trying to teach us how to protect our personal information would be useless without it being protected in levels that we cannot control. This article states facts, but it positive toward the growing awareness of the issue of technological privacy. It is good that the students are being protected from exploitation and more laws like this one should be passed so that there will be a sense of security for the future generation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/technology/with-tech-taking-over-in-schools-worries-rise.html?referrer=
This is an interesting article because it deals with the growing concern of the power of schools and systems.
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