Blog Archives

Safety and Well-being

Posted on by

[Last updated: May 2020]

Safety and Well-being: The ability to counteract the risks that the digital world may come with to protect one’s physical and mental well-being (e.g., guarding against Internet addiction and repetitive stress syndrome). Online risks can be classified along three main dimensions: conduct (e.g., cyberbullying, sexual harassment/unwelcome “sexting”); contact (e.g., face-to-face meeting after online contact, communication with individuals pretending to be another person); and content (e.g., exposure to pornographic content, violent or aggressive content, harmful speech, content about drugs, racist content) (Livingstone, Kirwall, Ponte, & Staksrud, 2014).

While bullying, more broadly, is an age-old problem that has been the focus of research and intervention for several decades, bullying in an online world raises new challenges.  While some forms of online bullying are similar to certain types of offline bullying, such as gossiping and social exclusion,bullying in the digital landscape can take new forms, including impersonation, hacking into others’ accounts, or spreading photos and videos online (Harvard Law School, 2016). Additionally, the notion of “repeated” harm attached to offline bullying must be reconceptualized in the digital landscape.

Youth and Cyberbullying: Another Look, which serves as an addendum to our 2012 Bullying in a Networked Era: A Literature Review, provides an overview of recent, primarily academic literature on youth and cyberbullying. The paper seeks to examine the changing landscape of bullying while acknowledging the convergence between the online and offline world. It explores the nuances around defining cyberbullying and the prevalence of online bullying in and beyond the U.S., and presents practical, impactful guidance on preventing and responding to cyberbullying.and examines how various stakeholders can prevent and mitigate this form of harmful behavior in light of emerging research.

Flagship publications:

Key learning resources:

These learning resources are available in over 35 languages! To view the translations, for each resource, please scroll down to “All Languages.” Additional languages will be added over time.

To learn about how to navigate our Digital Citizenship+ (Plus) Resource Platform — home to an evolving collection of 100+ educational tools (e.g., learning experiences, visualizations, podcasts) that can be used to learn and teach about youth’s digitally connected lives — please see the following slidedeck, presented at RightsCon Tunis 2019. The presentation also offers helpful tips in terms of adapting the tools to your context.

Other publications:

Selected presentations:

(For more information, please email Sandra Cortesi.)

  • February 2020: Keynote, “Well-being in a Digital Age”, Safer Internet Day, Sao Paulo, Brazil
  • May 2019: Guest lecturer, “Jugendliche Online —  Offline.” Wie gelingt die Balance? Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lucerne, Switzerland
  • October 2016: Keynote, “The Positive and Negative Aspects of the Internet: Bullying in a Digital Age”, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
  • April 2016: Panel, “Creating a Kinder World Together: How to Combat Cyberbullying,” Harvard Law School, Cambridge, USA

Privacy and Reputation

Posted on by

[Last updated: May 2020]

Privacy and Reputation: The ability to protect one’s personal information online, and that of others. An understanding of the digital “trail” left behind as a result of the activities one engages in online, the short- and long-term consequences of this trail, the appropriate management of one’s virtual footprint, as well as an understanding of inferred data (i.e., new data derived from capturing and analyzing other data points, which may result in new knowledge about a person (van der Hof, 2016)).

How young people navigate the digital space increases both the importance and the challenge of addressing concerns about privacy in the world today. Research has captured the variety of popular social media platforms youth now use and the extensive amounts of information young people share about themselves. Being able to use many of these platforms simultaneously, enables youth to channel various aspects of themselves in creative expression, identity formation, and social experimentation — all relevant parts of youth life.

Contrary to popular assumptions, research suggests that youth very much care about, contemplate, and manage their privacy online. However, their conceptual understanding of privacy (while it continues to evolve) tends to be different from the one of adults. Rather than conceiving of privacy as a matter of institutional risks involving strangers and eager third parties, youth often view the concept as more of a social concern (“What can my friends see?”) and manage their privacy in relation to people they already know. Moreover, young people report learning about privacy largely on their own by way of searching for information or intuitively stumbling upon it.

Acknowledging that youth perceive and may learn about privacy differently than adults does not diminish adult concerns, many of which are valid. Today, digital information about young people is collected, stored, and searched at an unprecedented rate, no longer checked by laborious paper record-keeping or costly data storage. Neither youth nor their parents have control over how this information is handled by third parties, as data is frequently gathered, accessed, disclosed, copied, and sold without consent or knowledge. Meanwhile, online reputation has an increasingly large sway over a young person’s future social, academic, and professional prospects.

Main publications:

  • Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age (Chapter 2: Dossiers / Chapter 3: Privacy / Chapter 4: Protections)
  • Teens, Social Media, and Privacy. Flagship reports based on a collaboration between the Youth and Media team at the Berkman Klein Center and the Pew Research Center. The report presents data from a nationally representative survey as well as insights and quotes from focus groups.

Main efforts:

  • Urs Gasser is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School. Since 2013, he has taught at Harvard “Digital Privacy” from a global perspective. Each semester, several classes address questions of youth and digital privacy issues.

Key learning resources:

These learning resources are available in over 35 languages! To view the translations, for each resource, please scroll down to “All Languages.” Additional languages will be added over time.

To learn about how to navigate our Digital Citizenship+ (Plus) Resource Platform — home to an evolving collection of 100+ educational tools (e.g., learning experiences, visualizations, podcasts) that can be used to learn and teach about youth’s digitally connected lives — please see the following slidedeck, presented at RightsCon Tunis 2019. The presentation also offers helpful tips in terms of adapting the tools to your context.

Other publications:

In the media:

Selected presentations:

(For more information, please email Sandra Cortesi.)

  • July 2019: Keynote, “Youth, Personal Data, and Social Media”, VII International Conference for the Protection of Personal Data, organized by the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce, Cartagena, Colombia. Short interview available here.

Information Quality

Posted on by

[Last updated: May 2020]

Information Quality: The ability to find, interact with, evaluate, create, and reuse information (broadly speaking; e.g., news, health information, personal information) effectively (Palfrey & Gasser, 2016).

The Internet has led to structural changes in the information environment that affect the quality of this information. The increased and more diverse set of “speakers” online, the lack of traditional gatekeepers, the entrance of new intermediaries, the disappearance or replacement of mechanisms and standards aimed at ensuring certain quality levels, media convergence, and context shifts make quality judgments about information in the digital media ecosystem arguably more challenging and makes corresponding skills even more important.

In 2012, members of the Youth and Media team published a flagship report called “Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality“. In the report, the authors put forward a new conceptual model – the information quality framework – that guides our research and policy discussions of information and information literacy. This framework is both process- and context-oriented (it accounts for the fact that information seekers don’t make information quality decisions only at the point of evaluating a source. Rather, it considers how youths’ levels of digital skills, social patterns, practices of online content creation, and general engagement with digital content affect how they search for, evaluate, and interact with information on the Internet).

Since the publishing of the report, the YaM team continues to apply the information quality framework to two types of information that have remained underexplored from a qualitative information search, evaluation, and creation perspective:

  1. Online news
  2. Health information

With regard to news, the YaM team seeks to close an important knowledge gap about youths’ online behavior–including news gathering activities, evaluation practices, and creative re-use of news. While earlier research suggests that youth (not unlike adults) prefer online news that is visual in presentation, relevant in topic, and manageable in size, additional research is needed to explore the social and creative elements of online news and, based on this understanding, to optimize curricular and tool development programs. In particular, we need a deeper understanding of the variables that affect youth behaviors related to online news. For example, what demographic factors lead to differences in young people’s online news behaviors? Understanding such factors is critical to the design of curricula and tools that accommodate variations in skills and habits among diverse populations of youth.

The Youth and Media team also wants to better understand how youth search for, evaluate, and share health information online. Research shows that young people are increasingly relying on the Internet as a primary source for health information. This presents a critical topic of investigation, because the consequences of misinformation or other forms of low-quality information can be serious. Yet, this space also presents opportunities for informing youth about health issues that they might have felt hesitant about scoping out elsewhere.

Flagship publication:

Key learning resources:

To learn about how to navigate our Digital Citizenship+ (Plus) Resource Platform — home to an evolving collection of 100+ educational tools (e.g., learning experiences, visualizations, podcasts) that can be used to learn and teach about youth’s digitally connected lives — please see the following slidedeck, presented at RightsCon Tunis 2019. The presentation also offers helpful tips in terms of adapting the tools to your context.

Other publications:

Selected presentations:

(For more information, please email Sandra Cortesi.)

Digital Economy

Posted on by

[Last updated: May 2020]

Digital Economy: The ability to navigate economic activities online and offline to earn different forms of economic, social, and/or cultural capital (e.g., earning money, increasing social connections, building personal brands).

Young people’s lives are increasingly shaped by digital technologies. While significant digital divides and participation gaps remain, an increasing number of young people around the globe participate in and contribute to the digitally networked environment in many forms, ranging from creative expression on social media to interactive gaming and collaboration.

The YaM team is exploring young people’s digital engagement through the lens of the digital economy and hopes to gain an initial understanding of youth’s practices, motivations, skills, pathways, and modes of value creating as they interact with a digital environment in which the boundaries between the commercial and personal spheres, between work and play, are often blurring.

Flagship publication:

  • Youth and the Digital Economy: A First Look at Youth Practices, Motivations, Skills, Pathways, and Value Creation. In addition to sketching building blocks toward a framework, the paper brings together three essays that explore in different application contexts both the opportunities and challenges that surface when young people engage with and participate in the digital economy.

Ongoing collaboration:

Key learning resources:

The learning resource “Who Do You Want to Be?” is available in over 35 languages! To view the translations, please scroll down to “All Languages.” Additional languages will be added over time.

To learn about how to navigate our Digital Citizenship+ (Plus) Resource Platform — home to an evolving collection of 100+ educational tools (e.g., learning experiences, visualizations, podcasts) that can be used to learn and teach about youth’s digitally connected lives — please see the following slidedeck, presented at RightsCon Tunis 2019. The presentation also offers helpful tips in terms of adapting the tools to your context.

Other publications:

Selected presentations:

(For more information, please email Sandra Cortesi.)

Data

Posted on by

[Last updated: May 2020]

Data: The ability to be aware of, create, collect, represent, evaluate, interpret, and analyze data from digital and non-digital sources.

The area of life around data — which entails the technical ability and critical thinking skills needed to create, collect, represent, evaluate, interpret, and analyze data from digital and non-digital sources — is becoming increasingly important for youth in today’s data-driven society. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2018 report indicates that data analysts will be one of the most in-demand job areas over the next several years. Additionally, this report indicates that a vast majority of employers will expect skills around data science and analytics from prospective applicants by 2021. While the formal educational setting and informal learning environments are increasingly aiming to address digital skills around data, there is a need for more initiatives that involve youth themselves in the development of educational resources around data creation, collection, representation, and analysis.

Looking ahead, we hope to facilitate more opportunities to co-design with youth educational resources around environmental conservation in the context of data (literacy). By co-designing educational resources with young people, we seek to cultivate skills key to academic and career readiness around a critical global issue in an engaging manner.

This is a slightly nascent area for the YaM team. While we are currently not working on a concrete publication in this space, we have spoken about the importance of data at various events and have examined ways this area can be further integrated in initiatives that aim to help equip youth with the skills to thrive in our digital world.

Against this backdrop, we would be delighted to explore possible collaborations around data; please don’t hesitate to email us if you would be interested in exploring this space further together.

Flagship publication:

Key learning resources:

To learn about how to navigate our Digital Citizenship+ (Plus) Resource Platform — home to an evolving collection of 100+ educational tools (e.g., learning experiences, visualizations, podcasts) that can be used to learn and teach about youth’s digitally connected lives — please see the following slidedeck, presented at RightsCon Tunis 2019. The presentation also offers helpful tips in terms of adapting the tools to your context.

Context

Posted on by

[Last updated: May 2020]

Context: The ability to be aware of, understand, and interpret the contextual factors of relevance (e.g., cultural, social, local/regional/global) in a given situation — with a particular emphasis on the experiences and perspectives of underrepresented groups, whether in terms of age, ethnicity, race, gender and sexual identity, religion, national origin, location, skill and educational level, and/or socioeconomic status — and effectively engage in the situation.

The manner in which youth engage with the digital world depends upon a variety of factors, including their access conditions, prior experiences with digital technologies, and contextual dimensions. Such contextual factors might include gender, age, ethnicity, race, sexual identity, physical availability, geography, religion, socioeconomic status, national origin, and educational attainment. At Yam, we are thus interested in better understanding the Internet and digital technologies access conditions youth are confronted with and further exploring questions such as:

  • What primary digital tools and platforms does a young person use (e.g., tools such as a desktop computer, laptop, or mobile device; platforms such as Twitter)?
  • Who is using these technologies (e.g., individual vs. shared family device)?
  • Where are the technologies being used (e.g., at school, at home, on the go)?
  • What underlying purpose are these technologies being used for (e.g., learning, social life, entertainment)?

Against the backdrop of the rapid pace of globalization, technological innovation, and changes in the workforce, our society is becoming increasingly interconnected. Thriving in today’s world requires a breadth of skills that not only include an understanding of how to use digital tools, but how to interact with others leveraging digital technologies. As skills such as communication, collaboration, and cross-cultural competency become increasingly important, it is also essential  that young people develop the capacity to be aware of, understand, and interpret the contextual factors of relevance when engaging with the digital world.

Flagship publication:

  • Youth and Digital Citizenship+ (Plus): Understanding Skills for a Digital World
    • [Pages 40-41] Discusses the importance of taking into account contextual factors (e.g., agre, ethnicity, race, etc.) in how youth engage with digital citizenship efforts.
    • [Page 48] Offers a brief overview of ways youth may be able to approach emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, in ways that take into account the impact of their actions online not only on an individual level, but the broader online community (e.g., taking into account cultural, social, and regional nuances).

Key learning resources:

We are just starting to work on learning resources in this area. If you have created resources in this area or would be interested in exploring collaborative work, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

These learning resources (with the exception of “Creating a Resume”) are available in over 35 languages! To view the translations, for each resource, please scroll down to “All Languages.” Additional languages will be added over time.

Other publications:

Selected presentations:

(For more information, please email Sandra Cortesi.)

February 2020: Keynote, “Well-being in a Digital Age”, Safer Internet Day, Sao Paulo, Brazil [minutes 11:43-14:47]

Civic and Political Engagement

Posted on by

[Last updated: May 2020]

Civic and Political Engagement: The ability to participate in public matters (e.g., LGBTQ rights; peace building; addressing hate speech) and advocate for issues one cares about — using digital and non-digital tools — ideally to improve the quality of life in one’s community, from micro to macro levels (Levine, 2007).

Many youth today are shifting their social activities from the offline environment to the hybrid, online-offline world. For some, such social activities include civic and political engagement. This may be expressed through traditional political campaigns. More often, however, and more importantly, over the long term, this activism is expressed through a breadth of civic activities. These expressions may range from sharing political news on social media to using Twitter to rally others around a cause a young person cares about, to leveraging hashtags to raise awareness around an issue. Moreover, as many new political organizations have shown, such as Black Lives Matter, the online is a driver of engagement and can lead to offline engagement, and vice-versa.

Main publications:

Key learning resources:

These learning resources are available in over 35 languages! To view the translations, for each resource, please scroll down to “All Languages.” Additional languages will be added over time.

To learn about how to navigate our Digital Citizenship+ (Plus) Resource Platform — home to an evolving collection of 100+ educational tools (e.g., learning experiences, visualizations, podcasts) that can be used to learn and teach about youth’s digitally connected lives — please see the following slidedeck, presented at RightsCon Tunis 2019. The presentation also offers helpful tips in terms of adapting the tools to your context.

Other publications:

Selected presentations:

(For more information, please email Sandra Cortesi.)

  • November 2019: Presentation, “10 Things I Learned from Young People”, Festival of Technology, Polytechnic of Turin, Turin, Italy
  • October 2019: Panel Presentation, “Social Media and Democracy,” Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Cambridge, MA

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Posted on by

[Last updated: May 2020]

Artificial Intelligence (AI): The ability to understand the algorithms involved in the AI-based platforms one interacts with, and the ethical conversations happening around the development of these technologies.

Over the past several years, technologies based on AI have started changing our daily lives. Innovations are rolled out at an accelerated pace, not only in professional working environments but also at home and in schools. Thus far, there is less research on the beneficial impact of AI-based technologies specifically on adolescents. However, recent reports and studies indicate that AI is playing an increasingly important role in, for instance, the domains such as education and health and well-being.

Setting out to understand what we know and what we don’t know, the YaM team released in 2019 a flagship publication entitled Youth and Artificial Intelligence: Where We Stand. In the publication, the authors highlight some of the team’s initial learnings and exploratory questions around the ways young people may interact with and be impacted by AI technologies. The publication addresses five thematic areas: 1) Education, 2) Health and well-being, 3) Future of work, 4) Privacy and safety, and 5) Creativity and entertainment.

The publication encourages various stakeholders — including policymakers, educators, and parents and caregivers — to consider how we can empower young people to meaningfully interact with AI-based technologies to promote and bolster learning, creative expression, and well-being, while also addressing key challenges and concerns. The publication has been featured at major events like ITU’s AI for Good in Geneva and UNICEF’s Towards Global Guidance on AI and Child Rights workshop.

We have also been exploring how to translate our AI research into educational tools. We have developed several tools — co-designed with and for youth — that can be used to learn and teach about AI in group-based formal or informal learning settings. The tools focus on some of the fundamental aspects of AI systems (e.g., what is an algorithm?), while also considering the ethical considerations surrounding AI-based applications (e.g., how do algorithms shape the content one sees on their social media feed(s) and how does this impact the way one interacts with information on social media?).

Additionally, we have been developing methods to translate our insights around AI in creative and accessible ways. For example, we are working on an AI children’s book (for ages 5+) that aims to foster discussion around themes such as AI and autonomy, the interplay between gender and STEM education, and human-machine interaction. To develop this book, we brought together a multidisciplinary and diverse group of YaM team members, with individuals from backgrounds such as education, the social sciences, art, policy making, youth activism, and engineering.

We are also working on expanding our repertoire of illustrations around AI that explore various domains related to AI, such as the future of work, health and well-being, creativity, privacy and safety, and education.

Flagship publication:

Ongoing collaborations:

Key learning resources:

To learn about how to navigate our Digital Citizenship+ (Plus) Resource Platform — home to an evolving collection of 100+ educational tools (e.g., learning experiences, visualizations, podcasts) that can be used to learn and teach about youth’s digitally connected lives — please see the following slidedeck, presented at RightsCon Tunis 2019. The presentation also offers helpful tips in terms of adapting the tools to your context.

Other publications:

Videos and Podcasts:

In the media:

Selected presentations:

(For more information, please email Sandra Cortesi.)

  • December 2019: Presentation, “Artificial Intelligence and its Impact on Young People”, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France.
  • September 2019: Presentations, Youth and Artificial Intelligence in the context of Child Protection, Revision of the OECD Recommendation on the Protection of Children Online,OECD, Paris, France.
  • November 2019: Panel, “Developing Policy Guidelines for AI and Child Rights”, Co-Hosted with UNICEF, Internet Governance Forum, Berlin, Germany
  • November 2019: Presentations, “Youth and Media: Trends and Developments” and “Youth and Artificial Intelligence”, ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, Zurich, Switzerland
  • September 2019: Keynote, “Youth and AI”, Symposium on Humane Artificial Intelligence, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawai’i
  • May 2019: Keynote, “Youth and AI: Where We Stand”, AI for Good Global Summit 2018, organized by the ITU and sister United Nations agencies, Geneva, Switzerland
  • January 2019: Presentation, “Youth, Artificial Intelligence, & Psychology”, Asia Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* Asia 2019), Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • [Urs Gasser] October 2018: Presentation, “AI in Asia and the Global Context”, Conference on AI and Commercial Law: Reimagining Trust, Governance, and Private Law Rules, Singapore Management University, Centre for AI and Data Governance, Singapore
  • November 2017: Presentation, “Artificial Intelligence and Education”, (Un)Colloquium, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, USA
  • October 2017: Presentation, “Youth and Artificial Intelligence”, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
  • November 2017: Presentation, Youth and the Lives of Tomorrow, Global Symposium on Artificial Intelligence & Inclusion, Rio, Brazil.

 

Digital Citizenship +

Posted on by

[Last updated: May 2020]

Digital citizenship (and related concepts such as digital literacy, media literacy, new media literacies, 21st century skills, or digital competence) has become a topic of growing importance among academics and policymakers alike, at the center of debate and theorization around the skills youth need to navigate and actively participate in our digital world. On a global level, a variety of stakeholders — including government, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and academia — have adopted the term to develop and shape formal and informal learning programs that aim to help youth address the challenges and embrace the opportunities the digital environment may present.

Since 2016, the YaM team has been studying the concept of digital citizenship, aiming to answer several key questions, including:

  • Why has the concept of digital citizenship become central in discussions about youth, education, and learning in the 21st century?
  • How is the concept of digital citizenship similar to or different from other concepts, such as digital literacy, media literacy, new media literacies, 21st century skills, or digital competence?
  • Based on a mapping of 35 frameworks, what does the current digital citizenship landscape address, and to what extent are youth’s voices included in the development, implementation, and evaluation of digital citizenship initiatives?
  • What are key considerations for learning spaces and meaningful youth engagement?
  • How can we address underexplored areas, such as artificial intelligence and data?

Read Youth and Digital Citizenship+ (Plus): Understanding Skills for a Digital World to explore this topic.

Flagship publication:

Ongoing collaborations:

Key learning resources:

  • Our Digital Citizenship+ (Plus) Resource Platform (DCPR) hosts an evolving collection of free learning experiences, visualizations, and other educational resources designed and maintained by us. Many of these learning resources are available in over 35 languages! To view the translations, for each resource, please scroll down to “All Languages.” Additional languages will be added over time. To learn about how to navigate our Digital Citizenship+ (Plus) Resource Platform — home to an evolving collection of 100+ educational tools (e.g., learning experiences, visualizations, podcasts) that can be used to learn and teach about youth’s digitally connected lives — please see the following slidedeck, presented at RightsCon Tunis 2019. The presentation also offers helpful tips in terms of adapting the tools to your context.

Other publications:

Selected presentations:

(For more information, please email Sandra Cortesi.)

  • [Urs Gasser] November 2019: Presentation,“The Evolving Children’s Digital Rights Discourse”, Digital Lives: Families in the Age of the Internet Conference, Swiss Institute of Comparative Law and University of Geneva, Lausanne
  • November 2019: Presentation, “The Next Generation and Digital Media”, Schmidheiny Foundation, Interlaken, Switzerland.
  • November 2019: Panel, “Youth, Education, and Digital Technology”, Festival of Technology, Polytechnic of Turin, Turin, Italy
  • September 2019: Presentation, “Youth and Digital Citizenship” in the context of Child Protection, Revision of the OECD Recommendation on the Protection of Children Online, OECD, Paris, France.
  • October 2018: Keynote, “How Children Grow Up in a Digital Environment”, Expert Consultation by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), workshop “Protection of Children in a Connected World” hosted by the University of Zurich Digital Society Initiative, with the support of the Swiss Government and co-sponsored by the Korean Government, Zurich, Switzerland
  • January 2018: Presentation, “Digital Citizenship”, University of Costa Rica, San Jose, Costa Rica

Research Brief: Youth Perspectives on Tech in Schools

As part of its ongoing Student Privacy Initiative, led by Executive Director Urs Gasser, the Berkman Center is excited to offer a number of related publications that synthesize diverse conversations, distill next steps and key issues, and provide initial substantive resources for technologists and school officials alike:

  • Youth and Media Research Brief, Youth Perspectives on Tech in Schools: From Mobile Devices to Restrictions and Monitoring: This research brief, prepared by the Berkman Center’s Youth and Media project for the co-organized Berkman Center and Consortium for School Networking working meeting on student privacy and cloud computing, presents empirical data on student privacy attitudes drawn from a series of focus groups conducted across the country between February and August 2013.
  • Student Privacy & Cloud Computing at the District Level: Next Steps and Key Issues: This report offers recommended next steps and prioritizes open issues in the K-12 edtech space, with a special emphasis on two topics: (1) law and policy and (2) norms, values, attitudes, and practices, as well as an overarching eye to opportunities for collaboration. It builds from and reflects upon a conversation co-organized by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s Student Privacy Initiative and the Consortium for School Networking. At this meeting, policymakers and educational technology thought leaders came together to emphasize the view “on the ground” as seen from the district level and identify specific resources for potential inclusion in a toolkit for diverse stakeholders considering the adoption and impact of cloud technologies in K-12 educational contexts.
  • K-12 Edtech Cloud Service Inventory: Created for and informed by a co-organized Berkman Center and Consortium for School Networking working meeting, this document aims to provide individuals with a non-technological background with a more concrete survey of the kinds of cloud computing technologies (categorized by the affordances each offers) that may be adopted in K-12 educational contexts.

You may also be interested in our previously published reports and guides, including an initial report, Student Privacy in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem: State of Play & Potential Paths Forward, and a legal analysis of COPPA and FERPA, Privacy and Children’s Data: An Overview of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

We look forward to continuing to develop additional materials in the months to come, with an eye to conducting legal analysis and producing resources for the March 2014 CoSN Annual Conference (after which an updated toolkit with materials targeted at district-level stakeholders will be made publicly available), while also engaging in ongoing collaboration, conversation, and research across both the law and policy and norms, values, attitudes, and practices clusters that have emerged from our initial gatherings.

Please contact Student Privacy Initiative Project Manager Alicia Solow-Niederman at aliciasn@cyber.law.harvard.edu with any questions or media inquiries.

About the Student Privacy Initiative

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s Student Privacy Initiative, led by Executive Director Urs Gasser, explores the opportunities and challenges that may arise as educational institutions consider adopting cloud computing technologies. In its work across three overlapping clusters – Privacy Expectations & Attitudes, School Practices & Policies, and Law & Policy – this initiative aims to engage diverse stakeholder groups from government, educational institutions, academia, and business, among others, develop shared good practices that promote positive educational outcomes, harness technological and pedagogical innovations, and protect critical values.

Please visit http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/studentprivacy for more information about the project.