Data Privacy and the Chrome Web Browser
Season 1- Episode #5
In this episode we spend some time on a more serious note, discussing data privacy and how the laws regarding this affect the tools we use with students.
We then talk about some ways to customize the Chrome Web Browser, including “pinning” tabs and customizing your bookmarks bar.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or hit Play Below.
Transcript
Welcome to the disruptive teaching podcast, a podcast about upsetting the average teaching and increasing your ability to reach every student in your classroom. We will focus on high and low tech tools for your classroom, along with a variety of assistive technologies that will help you create environments that are inclusive engagement.
Hi, I'm Cassie Frost, a former special education teacher specializing in emotional and behavioral disabilities and current Assistive Technology Specialist. Hi, I'm Carolyn rhotic, a speech language pathologist who has been working in the public school system for the past 12 years. I have worked in a variety of settings and also have a special education background.
Welcome to disruptive teaching. Thank you for joining us today. Today we are going to spend some time talking about data privacy and how that pertains to students use of the internet and applications online world going to spend some time customizing your Google Chrome browser ways to make it work a little bit better for you as far as bookmarks and pinning tabs and things like that. And we are going to wrap up this episode with a another free extension that will help you manage your extensions. So it's an extension to manage extensions, stick around and learn more.
Okay, so as we are talking about extensions and websites and apps, one of the things that we do need to talk a little bit about is data privacy and safety, especially as we're talking about students in elementary schools and junior High's, it really becomes a legal issue of what these websites and applications and extensions are collecting from students. So if you are using an app or an extension, and doesn't require a login, just simply you go on to it and use it You're not going to run into any issues in that regard. However, if it's any website or application or extension that's asking you to login, it's asking for information like your name, the user ID, then we're going to come into some issues. One of the ones that is the biggest one we're going to talk about is COPPA. And this is a federal law that actually guides the way that the internet websites and applications can advertise to and collect information from children under the age of 13. So this is going to be your elementary school students and your junior high students in order to use these apps, extensions, etc. They actually have to get parental consent before students can have accounts. So you may see online sometimes, like parental consent required or a student has to send a link to a parent. This is why in our district, we just have a consent form that goes home with the kiddos in the first week of school and they can't use those Tools until that consent form homes back and the list of tools is right on. Yes, yeah. And then you can't add something ad hoc without notifying the parent, right. And you would need to notify them Correct.
So, um, the way COPPA works with the websites is if a website or an extension is going to collect information, they have to take extra steps to keep that data safe. And they only can retain the information as long as they absolutely need it, and then they need to delete it. Um, one of the things that comes up frequently is what's considered personally identifiable information. And that's where the students can be using their name, their address, their phone number, their social security number, and then even if they're using a screen name, the specific streaming that they use over time or across different websites, because eventually that could be used to track the student. I know I've had certain like SLPs or teachers that will use even like student one student to where they're creating Accounts just so that there is no personal identifiable information at all. Um, any website that students use under the age of 13 does need to be COPPA compliant by law. As a district standpoint that comes in even a little bit more because you know, as if you're working for a district or working with students, I, you know, suggesting websites or recommending things, you really need to make sure that they are compliant. And that they are, you're getting the consent from the parents and that the students are getting using the site appropriately. And their data is not being kept in any way that it shouldn't be.
One thing is we're talking about extensions, most of them don't require logins, but they do link to a student's gmail account, right. So one thing to be aware of is if you are not a G Suite district, you're not you don't have a Google account district wide. That can become a little bit more of an issue. If you're a G Suite district Then your accounts are already under that protection. So that makes it a little bit easier to use some of those extensions. A good rule of thumb is check with your district for if they have an approved software list, make sure the stuff you're using is on it. Or ask if there is a process for it. What that is so that you make sure that you're following everything that you need to.
All right, we're going to talk about how you can organize all of your information on your computer. So the first thing I usually work on when I'm doing this with my students is bookmarks, because you need to be able to quickly get to various websites. So if you want to use the bookmark bar, if you go to the three dots in the upper right hand corner of your browser, if you're in Chrome, then you can go down to bookmarks.
Then there's an option that will pop up to show the Bookmarks Bar. And then you'll have an entire bar that runs at the top of your browser window underneath your Omni bar. And then within that, then you can go down to the bookmark manager. And you can create folders and organize all of your bookmarks so that they're easy to find. And you're just going to once you hit that bookmark manager part, you're really just live up to that three dots.
Again, it took me a minute because like I remember, I used to be able to actually do something like in the middle of the page. And obviously, it's been a while. But when you go up to the three dots, again, if you hover over it, you'll see it'll say organize. When you click there, then it'll have you sort you can sort the bookmarks, you can add new bookmarks, you can add folders and move things around. One thing to point out is everything we're talking about right now is all in Chrome, right? You can do bookmarks and other places. But some of the things like where to go to do things is going to be a little bit different. But the theory is generally this. Yeah, so I think like Mozilla, Internet Explorer, all of those have bookmark bars, right? You might be clicking in a little bit different place to do them.
Um, so one of the other things that you can do is at the top of the page right underneath that Omni bar, and again, we're going to keep saying on the bar, I say that and then people look at me like, what? Yeah, so an omni bar is just that fun little white bar at the top of your screen that you type in. So be where you type like www.google.com, right? That's your Omni bar. So underneath it, you have room usually for what like six bookmarks up there. Typically, I'm one of the things that you can do, which I learned at a conference like five years ago and I was kind of Mind blown
. If you go up to one of the Those bookmarks and right click on it, you'll see an option that will say Edit. When you click on Edit, you can actually rename that bookmark. So you can shorten the name. Or you can even go as far as deleting the name entirely and just have the icon. So like, for example, if you have YouTube pinned up there for your kids, as are they know exactly what that looks like, you don't need the word YouTube next to it for them to know what it is right? The benefit of deleting the name is now you have a lot more room for bookmarks on your bookmark bar. So you can get a lot more things that your students are going to at the top of that far. So the other thing that just popped into my head too is so if you are on, if you're on a website, and you want to bookmark it, you can just go to that omnibar again, and if you go to the far right of the address, there's a star so if you click on the star Then it will bring up the dialogue to have you add the bookmark. So this is where you can edit that name. And you can figure out what folder if you have folders where you want it to go. And then you can save it and you're done.
So the management is great kind of after the fact. So you've saved a whole bunch of stuff. And now you need to go back and like organize your life a little bit. And it's worth the time to take to go back and organize your stuff. Because most of us, you know, being teachers, we're always finding stuff, there's always things that you want to go back and look at. So like, I even have a sometime later folder that I will go back. You know, it was something that was interesting, but it wasn't something that I needed to read right away. So then you know, you have those down days, snow days, maybe that you have time to actually go and look at some of those things. So they're all in one Please you don't need to try and remember where they were what's a worthy bookmark? And what's the nuts over the bookmark?
Well I think it's interesting everybody kind of has their way of saving stuff so you're saying you like you use bookmarks your bookmarks to me I'd like the lost land of never see again. I don't ever think to go back to them. I know some people like Google Keith has been there thing I'm sure we'll talk about that until their point but Google Keep has been a great one. Padlet i know i at some points in my life. I've really helped a lot of things there. Right now, I think mostly I'm using that extension we talked about last week that to do have snooze. That was bad. The tabs news extension, so things just kind of come back because I'm the forgetful sort. If they don't, like keep popping back up and pestering me, I kind of forget they exist. And for me, it kind of depends on what kind of information is on there. So if it's something that I really do need to do something about, I'll probably use it use taps news, but if it's something that's just, you know, random, you know, someplace to travel or something that I'm not going to travel to anytime soon, then I'll put it in a bookmark. But that's my only personal, personal site. And now I think you've inspired me, I feel like I need to go back through my bookmarks, because when we're talking about this, honestly, there's probably some really good stuff in my breaks. Like, if I go back there, there's probably stuff that I'm like, oh, my goodness, I completely forgot about this. How cool is this? Right? I want to just do like a whole podcast episode where we both like go through our bookmarks, and all the cool stuff that might be scary. It could be or could be amazing. Or it could be more in that episode than probably like ever before. I don't know because we both have a lot of stuff. So okay, so now we just went down a rabbit hole. Let's go that route. One of the other things we wanted to talk about because a lot of times students will end in this if you are using extensions, and you're adding a lot of extensions on and I think we've talked about before, I'm kind of an extension junkie. We both are.
One of the things that will happen is that Omni bar starts getting kind kind of small, and you've got that whole line of icons up there for kids that can be really distracting. So one of the things that a lot of times students don't realize, and I know some teachers that don't as well is if you put your cursor on that new bar and move it way over to the right hand side, past that little star, and hover, you're actually going to get the two directional arrow, if you click, you can actually drag right and left to kind of move those extensions out of the way. So it makes your Omni bar bigger and hides those extensions off to the right. Or you can drag it back over and see more of the extensions. So it's kind of a nice way to hide some of those extensions for students that maybe are click happy and really want to see what's up there and are clicking on things a lot, hiding them as a good thing. So another thing that works out really well if you have apps that maybe you near websites, I guess tabs that you need open every day. So for example, maybe your email, you have a Gmail account, you log in in the morn You check your email every day.
So this seems like a little thing to do. But if you go to the tab where those tabs are crossed, and you right click, there's going to be a word on that menu that says pin. If you click the pin button, what it does is it makes the tab really small, moves it all the way from the left hand side and pins it there. So every time you open your Chrome browser, that pen is there, right? That tab is open, it's right there. So I do this every day. But well, I don't need to set it up every day, because it's already there. So I have two different work Gmail accounts. And then obviously, I have Dr. accounts that go with those two accounts. So I have those four things pinned all the time. And then I have dual monitors. So then another window on the opposite monitor. There are several websites that I use throughout the day, all day long. So those are always pinned up there too. So I don't need to think about where to find those things that I use all the time because they're always they're great. Yeah, well, you know, sometimes it hurt. I know when I was in the classroom, I usually had up my email, I usually had a our attendance software. And then I had up like my daily plan page. So like those I had pin. So every day, I open up the browser, and they were just in there, which, again, it's not a lot of time. But it takes a couple minutes when you come in in the morning to figure out what do you need open? What do you need to check. And for me, the attendance thing, I was awful at taking attendance. So if it was not like already up, it wasn't happening. Like the poor ladies in the office had to like call me a lot well.
If you want to know a little bit more about Chrome browsers and organizational tips and tricks, I will be doing an ATIA webinar on March 10. If you are interested in signing up for that one, go to disruptive hyphen teaching.com And click on the speaking events or upcoming speaking something, I don't remember what that tab is right off the top of my head speaking events, something like that on the right hand side, click on that, and the registration details will be there.
All right, we're going to talk about extensity, which is a awesome Chrome extension free, that is free. And it will help you control all of the other extensions that you have downloaded into your account. So if you go to the Chrome Store, download it, it will then appear in the next to your Omni bar in the upper right hand side of your Chrome browser. We have to just add here we just had to actually record this one because she said left. I recollect her that she was writing, we both kind of burst out laughing and so you're Getting the second attempt at this exactly. So the icon for extensity kinda looks like a yin and a yang in blue and white. So if you click on that, you'll have all of your extensions that you have downloaded, that come up in the drop down bar. So if you want an extension active, then it will be in color. And if you want to turn that extension off, you can click on it, and it will just go to gray. And it's really handy because then you don't have to wait for all of those things to load every time you start a new browser. So it's just handy. You don't have all that background taking up all of your resources while you're working.
So, for example, I have written right My school account. However, I clearly don't need to use reading rate myself, but I use it to demo various things with my students. So I will usually have that turned off. But if I need it, I can just click it, it pops up, and I'm ready to go in a matter of probably two or three seconds, versus trying to go in and find it again. So it's just super handy to use. I highly recommend it. I use it all the time. I think when I go out to conferences and stuff is probably one that I hear people talking about the most. And it's kind of a universal tool. Because also you have a lot of extensions up. You can run into your computer kind of loading slow your browser loading slow when you first turn it on, because they're all trying to get up and running. Right So turning off the ones that you're not using regularly. It's a great tool. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the disruptive teaching podcast. We hope you found something useful to support or gauge the students who work with. For more information visit disruptive helping teaching calm and follow us on social media on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. And connect with us on Twitter with the hashtag disruptive Transcribed by https://otter.ai