Cybersafety – Student Privacy
Whiles this advice comes from the Department of Education and Training’s website it is sound advice for all when setting up student email accounts. http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/support/pages/tecsupport.aspx#link14
The eduSTAR.ISP service provides student email accounts. These are generally required to allow students to join and manage many online tools and environments. An email address should provide no personal details about the student’s identity (as the school is already identified) . For example: phi001@myschool.vic.edu.au
Ensure that the naming conventions that you use do not identify students personally.
In Government schools, schools can use the eduSTAR.ISP service commonly known as (Netspace or more accurately iinet), run their own domain servers or may be setting up Google Apps for Education sites etc to create student email accounts.
It is often the case that the school is identified eg @agps.vic.edu.au @kew.vic.edu.au when they are created at the school.
Every Victorian Government schools has student email options and they are becoming increasingly important as the way to sign up and manage online tools and services -including Global2!
By adding a student’s full name to that email domain you have put too many pieces of personal information together on the web about your students.
You have told the world exactly where that child is each day during your school hours. Once that student creates a blog and adds an image the information is unquestionably identifiable.
This is a cybersafety issue and also one that you need to be educating your students and even some of the organisations they belong to like sports teams etc…
We have included more information in a previous blog. Full details http://global2.vic.edu.au/privacy/