Digital technology plays a big role in our students’ personal and educational lives. In today’s digital landscape the line between local and global is often blurred. Many users are often unaware whether the information they create is stored locally on their hard drive or on a server on the other side if the world. Hosted software solutions or, “the cloud” has greatly altered the educational software market. Cloud software is often as powerful as or more powerful than traditional software and available for free or for a very competitive price. To use cloud software users usually need to provide some personal information which is stored on a server. The collection and storage of student personal data by 3rd parties may cause some concern, especially where the student is still a minor.

We have put in place some measures to protect the privacy of students using digital technology for their education:
  • We host student data locally where it’s feasible.
  • Where data is hosted outside of the school, we encourage students to share as little personal data as possible.
  • Where data is hosted outside of the school, we require that data is anonymised by never sharing the full last names of students.
  • Where data is stored outside of the school, we require that the server is located either within the EU or falls under the US-EU Safe Harbor agreement.
  • Where data is hosted outside of the EU, we ensure that the server is certified with the the TrustE Children’s Privacy Seal.
  • We collect parental permission for the public sharing of student pictures, voice and video yearly and make this information easily available to all teachers.
  • We provide teachers with student data privacy guidelines through the faculty  handbooks.
  • We provide an information session about German data privacy regulations to new incoming faculty.
  • We provide a list of all online services that collect and host student personal data with details on what data is collected and stored and for what purpose.