![]() This is an important distinction, Kelly says. However, it earned a higher overall score than Duolingo because Quizlet’s privacy policy explicitly states that it does not sell or rent data to third parties, whereas Duolingo’s policy doesn’t clarify one way or the other. Quizlet, like Duolingo, displays behavioral or contextual ads and allows third parties to collect its data. Quizlet, on the other hand, earned a yellow badge and received an overall score of 52. That’s because Duolingo shares data for advertising or marketing purposes, displays behavioral or contextual advertisements and provides data to third-parties, according to Common Sense. The language-learning platform earned a yellow badge and received an overall score of 31 out of 100. Of the 297 apps evaluated to date, the majority (187) earned a yellow “Use with Caution” badge. For each app, the team spends between eight and 16 hours reviewing it. The team may never be able to provide an exhaustive list, not least because the privacy evaluations are incredibly time-intensive, Kelly explains. The ones they’ll be focusing on in the next year tend to be situated in the consumer space-think Angry Birds, Instagram and Pinterest, which are not intended for learning but are used widely by kids. Most of the ones that have been evaluated are outright educational apps. “That alone is a huge footprint.”Ĭommon Sense recently began chipping away at the remaining 3,000 apps they identified, going in alphabetical order. “Some of these apps have millions of kids using them,” Kelly says. The team started by evaluating about 200 apps that school district leaders indicated as high priority-in other words, those that were most downloaded in the app store or that district leaders identified as most popular in their schools. ![]() But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Kelly tells EdSurge. Since the project began in 2015, the privacy team has evaluated nearly 300 education apps. Apps that are deemed “Not Recommended” either don’t support data encryption or lack a complete privacy policy. Tools that earn a “Use Responsibly” badge meet Common Sense’s minimum criteria, while those that are labeled “Use with Caution” fail to clearly or fully define how they protect student information. It’s all covered in the team’s 150-question rubric, which is used to assign a tier to each tool. When establishing each rating, Common Sense’s privacy team considers federal and state privacy regulations as well as industry best practices. “That’s our best way of communicating what’s in a 20-page privacy policy,” says Girard Kelly, counsel and director of the privacy review at Common Sense. The privacy evaluations are broken down into three tiers: blue (“Use Responsibly”), yellow (“Use with Caution”) and red (“Not Recommended”). Common Sense Privacy EvaluationsĬommon Sense, a nonprofit education and advocacy organization, maintains a database that evaluates edtech tools on whether they are safe for use in schools. Below are three resources you could use when considering whether an app is appropriate for students. Harder still is uncovering the trackers that reveal how the data is being shared.įortunately, several tools have done the heavy lifting for educators and parents. Those who make the time will often find that the policies tend to be long, dense and difficult to decipher. There’s not enough time in the day for educators to read each company’s privacy policy. But which are safe to use with students? And how can you be sure? Countless more are available for Android devices. Today, the Apple app store alone features more than 75,000 education apps. Yet few users read the fine print-let alone students, as researchers have found. This is how many free apps monetize.Įvery time users click “allow” when an app asks them to enable location services or provide access to their contacts, microphone or folders, they are potentially making a transaction: sharing their personal information in exchange for using the app. That user data is often sold to or shared with other companies, such as advertisers who have a vested interest in behavioral data, and it’s not as anonymous as people think. ![]() These tenets hold as true for education apps as they do for those in the consumer market, privacy experts contend.Ī recent New York Times investigation found that many companies receive such precise, extensive data on their users that they-and anyone else they share this information with-could easily identify a single individual and pinpoint their location. And “free” apps often come with hidden costs.
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