Privacy Policy

PRIVACY POLICY

Effective Date: June 22, 2015

Thank you for choosing Zoom In!™, a free Web-based learning platform (http://zoomin.edc.org) for teachers of social studies, to be used in middle and high school settings, such as classrooms or libraries, or for educational use by teachers and their students from home in conjunction with classwork (the “Site”). The Site is provided to you by the EDC Center for Children and Technology and was developed with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

SCOPE OF THE PRIVACY POLICY

This privacy policy only applies to the Site. It describes how EDC collects and use information you provide us while using the Site. The privacy policy does not pertain to information you provide to us off-line or on any other websites. Please read this privacy policy carefully. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact zoomin@edc.org.

CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will post the updated policy on this page with a notice that the policy has been updated. Under certain circumstances, we may also elect to notify you of changes or updates to the policy by additional means, such as posting on the front page of the Site or sending you an email.

SCHOOLS AND STUDENT PRIVACY

We believe that schools and school officials are critical partners in our collective efforts to protect and ensure appropriate use of student-related information entrusted to them and to us.

EDC may collect information from your students, such as information that students may include in notes and essays they submit; first and last names, usernames, IP addresses, device identifiers, and other persistent identifiers; cookie information; and other standard server log information. By using the Site, you consent to this collection, as well as our use and disclosure of your student’s information consistent with this privacy policy as described below. You certify that your school or agency has obtained appropriate consent from the parent or guardian of that student or determined that one of the limited exceptions to the consent requirement applies. Controlling access to certain student information remains the legal responsibility of the applicable school. You can find more information on FERPA and related guidance here, and a summary of the limited exceptions here.

COLLECTION OF INFORMATION

We may ask visitors to the Site to provide some or all of the following types of information when they register for certain services on the Site, access various content or features, or directly contact us with feedback or suggestions:

  • Contact information, such as name and e-mail address

  • User name and password

  • Other demographic information, such as job information, zip code, school affiliation

  • Contact information for friends and others whom you recommend are likely interested in the site or service (note: such information is used solely to facilitate the communications requested)

  • Correspondence you send to us

We also may collect certain information automatically when you visit the Site, including:

  • Your browser type and operating system

  • Your Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is the number automatically assigned to your computer whenever you access the Internet, and which can sometimes be used to derive your general geographic area

  • Sites you visited before and after visiting the Site

  • Web pages you view and links you click on within the Site

  • Information collected through cookies, Web beacons, and other technologies

  • Standard server log information

USE OF INFORMATION

We generally use the information that we collect about you to:

  • Fulfill your requests for services and information

  • Enable you to participate in features such as assigning and using lessons, assessing or revising writing, and communicating with students

  • Engage in internal, promotional, and fundraising activities, including by direct mail, e-mail, and other forms of communication

  • Send you e-mail alerts from EDC’s Center for Children and Technology

  • Analyze the use of the Site and information about visitors to our Site to understand and improve our service offerings, such as determining which pages are most popular, which browsers are most used, how long users spend on the Site, and which websites they have come from

  • Customize the content you see when you visit the Site, including to direct users to Site resources specific to a grade band and content area and to relevant state curriculum standards

  • Prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities, and otherwise use the collected information in accordance with the Terms of Use

  • For any other purposes disclosed to you at the time we collect your information or pursuant to your consent

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

We may share information that is collected from you in the following circumstances:

  • Authorized third-party service providers. In certain cases, we contract with other companies to provide services on our behalf. We may share your information with these companies that provide services to us, including companies that assist with business analytics, data processing, account management, and other services. These service providers may maintain customer databases with email addresses of Site visitors who have provided them to us by registering at our Site or signing up for email alerts. We (along with our service providers) will use these addresses to respond to the general purposes for which we collected the information, to provide services, and to operate the Site, including to respond to inquiries and for email distribution, list processing and analysis, and promotions management. Our service providers have access to your information as necessary to provide certain services on our behalf. They are required to maintain the privacy of all such information in their possession or control, and can only use the information on our behalf for the purpose that we have contracted them, for example, sending you a newsletter. They are not authorized to use your information for any other purpose. We will not share your email address with any other unaffiliated organization unless otherwise described below.

  • Business transfers. We may share your information in connection with a substantial business transaction, such as the sale of the Site, a merger, consolidation, or asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy.

  • Legal requirements, safety, and security. We, and our service providers, may disclose your information when we have a good faith belief that it is necessary to detect, prevent, and address fraud and other illegal activity; to protect ourselves and you from violations of our Terms of Use; to prevent death or imminent bodily harm; and to otherwise protect and defend our or our users’ legal rights, interests, property, and safety.

  • With your consent. We otherwise may share your information with your consent.

We also may share aggregated or anonymized information with third parties, including to help us develop content and services that we hope you will find of interest or to help these third parties develop their own products and service offerings. This sharing of anonymized or aggregated information will not include information that could be used to individually identify you.

Protection of Information

We are committed to protecting your information. We have adopted commercially reasonable technical, administrative, and physical procedures to help protect your information from loss, misuse, and alteration. Please note that no data transmission or storage can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. We want you to feel confident using the Site but we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us.

Children’s Privacy

We are dedicated to handling any information obtained from children with care and respect.

  • Collection. Students under the age of 13 may not provide their personal information or participate in activities involving the sharing of personal information without the consent of an educator, or as otherwise permitted by law. In using the Site, for example, a student may provide his or her name, email address, or responses to essay questions in connection with a lesson in the school context. As described above in the section on Collection of Information, we also may automatically collect certain information from children when they visit our Site.

  • Use and disclosure. Consistent with an educator’s consent or applicable law, we may use and disclose children’s personal information for the purposes and in the manners described above in the sections on Use of Information and Disclosure of Information.

  • Access. State departments of education, school districts, homeschoolers, and school teachers or administrators may request to review the personal information of their students who are under the age of 13, to have this information deleted, or to refuse to permit further collection or use of their students’ personal information by emailing us at zoomin@edc.org.

If you have any questions about how we handle children’s personally identifiable information, please contact us at zoomin@edc.org. In addition, our contact information is provided below under Contact Us.

Use of Cookies and Other Technologies

Cookies are small amounts of data that are stored in separate files within your computer’s Internet browser. Cookies are accessed and recorded by the websites you visit so they can recognize the same browser navigating online. We use cookies to help us recognize your browser as a previous visitor and to save and remember any preferences that may have been set while your browser was visiting the Site; to help us customize the content you are shown while visiting the Site; and to help measure and research the effectiveness of our interactive online content, features, and other communications.

We also may use standard Internet technology, such as Web beacons and similar technologies, to track your use of the Site. Web beacons (sometimes called transparent GIFs, clear GIFs, or web bugs) are small strings of code that provide a way for us to deliver a small graphic image (usually invisible) on a webpage or in an email. Web beacons can recognize certain types of information on your computer, such as cookies, the time and date a page is viewed, and a description of the page where the Web beacon is placed. We use these technologies to improve your experience on the Site, including to provide you with content customized to your interests and to understand whether users read email messages and click on links contained within those messages so that we can deliver relevant content and offers.

Contact Us

Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)
Attn: Lisa Ballew, Office of Legal Affairs
43 Foundry Avenue
Waltham, MA 02453
Email: lballew@edc.org

EDC Center for Children and Technology
Attn: Bill, Tally
Senior Researcher and Designer
96 Morton St., 7th Fl.
New York, NY 10014
Email: btally@edc.org