There is inevitable risk as an edtech vendor working with K-12 schools. For most edtech providers, the standard operating procedure to obtain the data they need to work with a school is through rostering. What is rostering? Traditional rostering is a high-risk data exchange when the student’s personally identifiable information (PII) is copied from the school’s roster to the edtech vendor’s database. But the risk of having all of those copies of the roster out there is that every instance is another potential for a breach or exposure of data.
Most Vendors Don’t Need PII
GG4L is conducting pilots with progressive edtech vendors who don’t want to touch student data, especially with students under the age of 18 who are unable to consent to their data being used. GG4L’s secure data exchange allows these vendors to connect with the school without being forced to use traditional rostering or even touching PII. We filter out the student data during the exchange process.
Schools Want to Know Where PII Is Going
At the same time that vendors are trying to find ways to work without having to use PII, schools want to know who has access to their data, where it’s going, and why. GG4L provides districts with PII monitoring tools so that they can see which vendors have their data, whether or not that vendor has been approved by 1EdTech, and what other third parties might have access to the data (Google, for example, if Google is being used as the authenticating login tool).
The Future of Secure Data Exchange
GG4L is working to collaborate with edtech vendors, schools, and 1EdTech to potentially eliminate the need for individual data privacy agreements (DPAs) with every school by standardizing and providing anonymized roster data.
Michael King, GG4L’s Chief Growth Officer said, “We want to be able to provide the tools to monitor what’s happening, and at the same time, provide a framework so that over time we begin to reduce the amount of data that’s going to vendors.”
Working Together
The future of education is in edtech. And the future of edtech is a collaborative effort to better secure student data, protect student data privacy at all costs, and work together to ensure that the industry moves forward in a safe way.
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Who Can You Trust to Handle Student Data?
Our recent webinar, “Who can you trust when it comes to handling student data?” digs deep into the conversation on data privacy and the industry challenges that have emerged, including how school districts can effectively provision learning apps accessing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and opportunities for districts and edtech vendors to collaborate on a unified approach toward data anonymization. If you’re concerned about data privacy and how student data is managed, view the webinar.
