PRIVACY

GRAPHICS ON SCREEN
TCH Teaching Channel & Common Sense Media Present
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
Good afternoon, everybody.
Group VO
Good afternoon, Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
I have some big news for you today. Big news. Are you ready? Okay.
Dr. Melina Johnson VO/OC
My name is Melina Johnson. I teach at Rancho...
GRAPHICS ON SCREEN
Rancho Milpitas Middle School, Milpitas, CA
...Milpitas Middle School and I teach English Language Arts and the AVID elective.
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
So what's going to happen is we're going to have some observers come, some researchers are going to come onto campus. The observers are going to record everywhere you go all day long.
Dr. Melina Johnson VO
Today's lesson is about privacy policies. Even as adults, we find that to be a pretty dry topic. So it's a difficult thing to expect kids to do, as well. So I think it will be important to put it in the context of can we find a purpose for our reading? Can we find the information that we're specifically looking for? Find the evidence that we need?
Dr. Melina Johnson OC/VO
Three minutes with your group. Talk about it. Think about everything I just said. What's going to happen with these observers, what these researchers are going to do? And I want you to make a list for me so you have all your questions and all your concerns. We're using common core standards and this has to do with reading for information. It is a skill that we really do need to focus on in the middle grades especially. Can we find a purpose for our reading? Can we find the information that we're specifically looking for? Find the evidence that we need.
Female Child Wearing Gray Sweater OC
Are we assigned to a person, a specific person?
Male Child Wearing Gray Hoodie OC
Are they getting into your personal life?
Dr. Melina Johnson VO
Your personal life? Things you want to, just keep them to yourself?
Male Child Wearing Gray Hoodie OC
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Melina Johnson VO/OC
Okay. Let's go around. I want to hear a little bit from each of you.
Male Child Wearing Black Jacket OC
Are they going to do this to every school?
Dr. Melina Johnson VO/OC
Okay. That's a good question. Do you mean like every school in the school district?
Male Child Wearing Black Jacket VO
Yeah.
Female Child With Black Hair OC
Do we have a choice to do this?
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
Do you have a choice? Okay.
Male Child With Curly Black Hair OC
Do they listen to our conversations?
Dr. Melina Johnson VO/OC
Okay. That was asked in a few places. Do they listen to our conversations? So you have some concerns. You might be glad to know that this actually isn't really happening, okay.
Dr. Melina Johnson VO/OC
The best way I think to get the kids engaged is to relate it to their everyday life. Now that you have them, you make that transfer into their virtual world. When you have privacy issues here, why aren't, why don't you have those same issues when you're online? Maybe that's something you need to think about.
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
When you go onto websites, there are ways that they watch you. They track your every move. So if that was making you uncomfortable in real life, do you feel the same way about it happening to you when you're online?
Female Child With Curly Black Hair OC
It's different from them really watching you than from on the internet.
Dr. Melina Johnson VO
So it's different for you because they can't see your face?
Female Child With Curly Black Hair OC
Yeah.
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
This is something we run into is that a lot of you when you're online you feel like you're anonymous. But a lot of times you're not quite as anonymous as you think you are. There are some words I want to go over. We're going to hear these words a lot in our conversations today. Cookies. Do we all know what cookies are?
Group VO
Yeah.
Dr. Melina Johnson VO
And I don't mean the ones that you eat.
Group VO
Oh.
Male Child #1 VO
I know.

Dr. Melina Johnson OC
We're talking about being on the computer. What is a cookie?
Female Child Wearing Peach Jacket OC
I think it's like a tracker or something.
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
Okay, a tracker. What makes you think that?
Female Child Wearing Peach Jacket OC
Because sometimes when you go on a computer, something pops up and it says allow or deny.
Female Child With Long Hair OC/VO
She said cookies. I thought she meant the one you eat. That's what, that's what I thought. I actually learned that they were little invisible trackers that track where you go on the internet and then they can like advertise back to you.
Dr. Melina Johnson VO/OC
The next key term is third party. I wanted the kids to see that these, the key terms that we'd gone over, this new idea for them about cookies. This, this new idea about third party advertisers or, or companies that someone was thinking about that. That those are in the privacy policies. See, here we go, cookies. When you visit Google, they send one or more cookies to your computer. I will break the students up into small groups. I want them to feel like they're not sort of stuck with this difficult reading on their own. So what you're looking for is are they collecting identifiable information? Okay? Something that's going to make it so you're no longer anonymous.
Dr. Melina Johnson VO
I printed out the privacy policy for a website that I know is fairly popular with the kids. And it was a little shorter, less complex than a lot of the others because it's designed for kids. I also want you to find out does Tumbler use cookies? If they use cookies, do they give that information to a third party? And discuss with your group and decide.
Female Child In Gray Sweater & Female Child In Peach Sweater OC
Tumbler uses cookies to help identify and .
Female Child In Black Sweater OC
It asks you for what? Credit card information and your, know your email.
Male Child In Dark Gray Hoodie OC
They provide the information each time you return to the website.
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
Okay.
Female Child In Black Sweater OC
I haven't seen advertisements on Tumbler, but.
Female With Curly Black Hair OC
On Facebook, there is.
Female Child In Black Sweater OC
Yeah.
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
On Facebook, they're a lot, right? They're a lot of third party links that take you to all kinds of things.
Dr. Melina Johnson VO/OC
The kids understand I'm not telling them, "Don't go online anymore." It's I want you to be smart about what you do when you're on line and I want you to protect yourself."
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
All right, your time is up. Let's come back together and see what you've come up with. So does Tumbler collect personally identifiable information?
Female Child In Black Sweater OC
Email information. I don't really use privacy on, when I go onto the internet. But now that I look at the lesson, I should start.

Female Child With Black Hair OC
I think it's actually very good that students, children actually start to learn about these things so they grow to be more responsible.
Female Child With Ponytail OC
It says your, they collect your email address, the personal and financial information.
Dr. Melina Johnson OC
Okay, good. I think the biggest impact that the lesson had on the kids was the idea that you're being followed online. That somebody is watching where you go and tracking what might be interesting to you. And the kids can see benefits in that. But also if they feel uncomfortable with that, they've also now learned that they have choices.
GRAPHICS ON SCREEN
TCH Classroom Takeaways:
#1 Model The Lesson Activities First #2 Pair Students To Analyze A Difficult Text #3 Have Students Circle Or Highlight When Reading #4 Relate To Students Everyday Lives
FADE TO BLACK