I would like to thank all the teachers who have made ClassChatter.com
and ClassChatterLive a part of their new school year. As we begin the
new school year ClassChatter is more popular then ever, and this new
popularity has over the last few days been placing increasing strain on our
servers. We have worked to keep the site up and have made several
adjustments to hopefully alleviate any future issues. I would like to
apologize to those who have experienced issues over the last two days.
We understand how important it is that ClassChatter is ready when
your students are. I recommend that all users follow our Twitter feed
for the latest updates and as a line of communication if our server happens
to drop out again.
twitter.com/dandeluca
I look forward to another
successful year!
For more than four decades the AEP Awards have honored outstanding
resources for teaching and learning. ClassChatterLive is proud to have
learned that we were named a winner Tuesday June 8th in Washington DC.
ClassChatterLive won a Distinguished Achievement Awards for
Technological Innovation. (Learn More)
ClassChatterLive was judged by a panel of experts and teachers and came out
tops in its category. Why not find out for yourself with a free trial!
ClassChatterLive Security Enhancements / Ginger widget
We have made several security enhancements to ClassChatterLive today.
You should no longer get error messages saying that the page has both
encrypted and non-encrypted information. This should also improve load time
on the teachers side of the site. We are working on a solution for
the Ginger Widget on ClassChatterLive -- I apologize to those of you who
have had strange behavior of your dashboard pages over the last few days.
We are working hard to make sure that does not continue to happen.
Is Your District's Technology Program FERPA compliant
There are some concerns regarding the use of blogs in a secondary
education classroom. It is always vitally important to protect student
privacy for both legal and ethical reasons. This is doubly important
when materials are posted on the Internet, the most public of forums.
The federal law regarding student privacy is known as The
Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). It is important to
note that FERPA was ratified before the invention of the Internet.
Many of its provisions therefore are awkward to use with modern
educational technology. FERPA outlines that personally
identifiable student information may only be released in two
situations. First schools may release "directory information" if
certain conditions are met. Directory information includes a student's
name, address, email address, and similar information. (Baskin &
Surratt 2001) Schools may also release student information with
parental consent. A student's work is protected under this provision.
Any work that is personally identifiable should not be posted to the
public. This includes work that is posted online such as in a blog. Work
that cannot be identifiable to a student can be posted for public
consumption. (Baskin & Surratt 2001)
There is little case law involving FERPA and student blogs. However, the
legal departments of several universities have produced guidelines for
their faculty. The University of North Carolina's published guidelines
state that students may create and maintain blogs in a classroom setting if
the blogs are only viewable to fellow class members and the instructor
makes no evaluative statements in the blog. (Drooze, 2007) Despite
this "loophole" it would appear that prudence would dictate that parental
consent be collected before an elementary or primary school educator
starts blogging in his or her classroom.
ClassChatter and ClassChatterLive also provide several tools to help you
meet FERPA compliance. In fact you do not need to sacrifice collaboration
to meet FERPA. Our unique "identity masking" feature allows students to
hold online discussions while keeping their identities a secret, yet still
allowing teachers easy access to their 'unmasked' identity. ClassChatter
and ClassChatterLive also let you precisely control how much access
students have to each others work throughout the site. Furthermore, with
Assignment Blogs, teachers and students have an area to privately and
securely post, answer and grade assignments.
Teacher's First (http://www.teachersfirst.com) has
posted a great review of ClassChatter.com. If you are new to
ClassChatter and want to find out what we are all about I suggest you check
it out. This is also a great resource if you are trying to explain
ClassChatter to a skeptical administrator.
TeachersFirst is a
free, ad-free teacher resource web site offered as a service to teachers by
a non-profit learning and technologies corporation, The Source for
Learning. Our value-added reviews and teacher-friendly site have been
helping teachers since 1998, sharing the best of the web and our own
original content along with practical implementation ideas and best
practices for effective integration of technology as a tool for teaching
and learning. We have an international audience and a strong reputation for
providing and recommending high quality resources.
