From the good-for-them dept.: Katie Kilmartin reports: In order to protect the privacy of students, faculty and staff, ITS altered the UNC directory to no longer include home addresses or phone numbers. The change became effective Oct. 31. Privacy concerns from students and campus stakeholders prompted the change, said Kate Hash, communications manager for ITS. …
Category: Youth & Schools
Schools keep track of students’ online behavior, but do parents even know?
Taylor Armerding reports: Parents expect schools to keep track of their kids. But in the digital era, keeping track is vastly different than it was a generation ago, thanks to Big Data analytics. According to its advocates, this is a very good thing. Gathering individual information on students can lead to “personalized” and “adaptive” learning…
“Protecting our Children” in the Wake of Sandy Hook: Psychiatric Surveillance of US Public School Children
Using the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre as its justification, the Obama administration has recently given the psychiatric business and pharmaceutical industry a major gift by quietly introducing a behavioral and mental health program in public schools throughout the United States. The maneuver was initially laid out on January 16, 2013 in President Obama’s executive…
Alabama school district paid an ex-FBI agent $157K to monitor students on social media
Joanna Rothkopf reports: Last year, in an effort to improve security, the Huntsville City School district paid an ex-FBI agent Chris McRae $157,000 to monitor the social media activity of its 24,000 students. The effort was part of a program called SAFe, Students Against Fear, where students and faculty could file anonymous tips to McRae who would…