More attention has been put on the education industry, especially over the course of the past year, because of all the incidents impacting cybersecurity, student safety, and data privacy in K-12 schools.
Students today have grown up in the digital world we all have become accustomed to. Applications, social media, video conferencing, cloud storage, file sharing—you name it. The digital footprint for students is bigger than those of years past. Further, the learning environments of today have made it more difficult for district IT teams to monitor and protect data privacy in K-12 schools.
It raises a couple of questions: What did we learn over the past year in terms of protecting data? And, what does the state of data privacy in K-12 schools look like heading further into 2022?
Jim Siegl, a Senior Technologist at The Future of Privacy Forum, joins this episode of The K-12 Tech Experience podcast to discuss data privacy in schools—on the heels of Data Privacy Month in January. Jim shares his thoughts on why 2021 was more challenging for schools in terms of privacy than 2020, what the FPF is focused on this year, and we get a few of his predictions on where student data privacy is headed.
Continue reading to learn more about Jim and the Future of Privacy Forum. Take a listen to the full conversation and make sure to subscribe to The K-12 Tech Experience to stay up to date on all of our discussions with K-12 education technology leaders!
JK: Before we get going, I like to have our guests share a bit about themselves and the organization they are working for. Can you share a bit about yourself before we get started?
JS: I think my career path up until recently joining the Future of Privacy Forum is pretty similar to many of your listeners. I spent 18 years as a technology architect for Fairfax County Public Schools. Fairfax is the 10th largest school district in the country—about 180,000 students.
As a technology architect, my job was to evaluate new technologies coming into the district. I made sure the technology was secure, that it was private, could integrate into our systems and could scale to a system as large as Fairfax.
JK: And what about The Future of Privacy Forum?
JS: We’re often called a Think Tank and are a non-profit organization. Our goal is to bring together voices from industry, academia, civil society, to explore privacy challenges posed by emerging technologies.
On the Youth & Education team, we focus on ethical and equitable uses of data for children and students in K-12 and higher ed. But as a larger group, we work on several different workstreams. We have folks that deal with the privacy impact of artificial intelligence and biometrics, mobility and cars, health, VR, smart cities, and global privacy. It runs the whole gamut.
Listen to the rest of the conversation with Jim below and check out previous episodes on the ManagedMethods podcast page. Make sure to subscribe to The K-12 Tech Experience wherever you listen to your podcasts, so you never miss an episode!