Students of all ages can use Edpuzzle. In some cases, however, depending on your state or regional laws, you might be required to first obtain parental consent. Find all the information you need to know in the following article*.
What is parental consent?
Privacy laws and/or regulations often require that parents (or legal guardians) consent to or are notified prior to their child's personally identifiable information (PII) being disclosed to a third party.
In the field of edtech, this means that teachers and schools must have proven parental consent before students provide any personal information to third parties, like Edpuzzle.
The fact that teachers cannot invite students to their Edpuzzle classrooms without expressly consenting to Edpuzzle’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and verifying their email address thereafter, combined with the impossibility of creating a student account without a unique class code or link, ensures that Edpuzzle does not collect any data it should not be allowed to collect.
When is it necessary to obtain parental consent?
As a general rule, parental consent may apply to different age ranges depending on state or regional law.
In the United States, student privacy is primarily governed by two federal laws: the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
- FERPA generally prohibits schools from disclosing personally identifiable information from a student's education records to a third party without written consent from the parent (or the student if over age 18). At the same time, however, FERPA allows for exceptions under which student PII may be shared without consent. One of these exceptions is the "school official exception," under which schools may share student PII with designated school officials with a legitimate educational interest. Third parties may be considered school officials if they are performing a service for which the school would otherwise use employees. Schools define who constitutes a school official with a legitimate educational interest in their annual notification of rights under FERPA.
- COPPA protects children under the age of 13 who use commercial websites, online games, and mobile apps. While schools have an obligation to make sure the services their students use treat the data they collect responsibly, COPPA ultimately places the responsibility on the online service operator. At the same time, COPPA generally does not apply when a school has hired a website operator to collect information from students for educational purposes for use by the school. In those instances, the school (not an individual teacher) can provide consent on behalf of the students when required, as long as the data is used only for educational purposes.
In the European Union and the United Kingdom, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) states that the processing of a child's PII is only lawful when the child is at least 16 years old, although it allows for Member and Signatory States to lower the age provided that it is not below age 13. Currently, the age limits are the following:
- Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia: minors under 16.
- France, Czech Republic, Greece and Slovenia: minors under 15.
- Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Spain: minors under 14.
- Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and the UK: minors under 13.
According to the GDPR, schools are considered data controllers and are responsible for ensuring that student data is processed accordingly. In other words, schools from the EU/EEA must obtain parental consent prior to disclosing PII to any third-party service provider from children under the age limit determined by each Member State’s law.
In Canada, according to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), consent is valid only if it is reasonable to expect that the student whose personal information is collected would understand the nature, purpose, and consequences of the collection, use, or disclosure to which they are consenting. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has taken the position that, in all but exceptional circumstances, this means anyone over the age of 13. In other words, disclosure of PII of children under age 13 must be previously authorized by the children's parents or legal guardian.
Where do I get it from?
Contacting your IT admin – or anyone at your school responsible for data protection – should be the very first step. If you are not part of a school or in the unlikely event that your school will not take care of parental consent, you should request it for EVERY student that you invite to Edpuzzle.
By agreeing to Edpuzzle’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy upon registering your teacher account, you acknowledge that you understand your obligations or the obligations of your educational institution to obtain parental consent, where appropriate.
What if I don't need parental consent or am exempt from obtaining it?
If you are not planning to use Edpuzzle with students in the above-mentioned age ranges, parental consent is not required in your case, or any legal exemption applies to the obtainment of parental consent, no further action is required.
Parental consent permission slip templates
For schools in the United States or the European Union/EEA, respectively, Edpuzzle provides a template to help schools obtain parental consent, where applicable (attached to this article: USA template and EU template).
Nevertheless, it’s up to schools to determine how best to use the template, to complete it with their own contact information and information about the services they enable, and to share it along with Edpuzzle’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
SCHOOLS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AND COMMUNITIES HAVE DIFFERENT REGULATIONS AND APPROACHES, AND EDPUZZLE CANNOT ADVISE YOU ON COMPLIANCE WITH THE LAWS APPLICABLE TO YOUR SCHOOL. YOU SHOULD OBTAIN ANY PARENTAL CONSENT THAT MAY BE REQUIRED BY YOUR SCHOOL IN A MANNER THAT COMPLIES WITH THE LAWS OF YOUR JURISDICTION.
Have questions about parental consent? Don’t hesitate to contact us at support@edpuzzle.com.
*The information provided herein does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. Instead, all information, content, and materials available in this article are for general informational purposes only, and may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. Readers of this article should contact their attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter.