Privacy

There are two important issues concerning your privacy that you should be aware of.

1. Course Webpage and Blog is PUBLIC (but you can opt out)

   This course page is viewable by the public. You can read more in the About Page. The short version is that I think it is good for you to begin to get acclimated to writing with the mindset that what you write will always be publicly available. When you go out into the workforce anything you email or write could very well end up being made public. You should always keep that in mind, and now is a good time to start. Don’t assume that anything you do online is ever really private.

   However, I will not force you to make your work publicly available. And you have several options to protect your privacy.

   Option One: If you don’t mind having your writing be made public, but would like to preserve your anonymity – you may post under an Alias. Create a nickname in your profile page. Select that nickname under “Display Name Publicly As” in your profile. What you write will be public. But your real name will not be attached to it.

   Option Two: If you prefer that only registered users of this course blog read your posts, then Edit the Visibility settings just about the Publish Button in the post editor each time you post something. Set it to “Private”. Your post will be invisible to anyone that is not logged in to the site. The title of your post will have “Private” at the beginning to let you know that you’ve successfully made it a private post. (See this screen shot for more details.)

   Option Three: If you feel that neither of the above options meet your privacy needs, then please contact me and even more secure options can be arranged.

   When the Class is Over
   I will delete all accounts 2-4 months after I have submitted final grades. Your posts and all of your registration information will be deleted. Please come see me if you would like your posts and comments to be preserved. We can make those arrangements.

2. Google Document Use
   

   Students will be submitting papers to me using Google Documents. There are several advantages to this (I discuss these advantages on my personal blog here).  I will comment on and grade these papers in Google Documents. I will also use Google Forms to help me create an efficient grading rubric. This means that some of your intellectual property and some of your grades will be temporarily be stored on Google’s servers.

   I believe that Google goes to great lengths to ensure that only I (and occasionally employees of Google) will have access to the information stored on their servers. For example:

• Google will not own your content. You own the copyright to all of the original documents you create and store on Google Documents.
• Your documents are password protected. Your documents are private by default, and are not publicly available. The only persons who are permitted to view your documents are the persons with whom you’ve elected to share them with. If you do not share a document with anyone, then to access your documents someone would need to have access to your gmail username and password.
• After you have received your graded paper from me you may delete it from your Google docs account. According to Google, once you delete a file, it will be completely erased from Google’s online servers within 30 days. Within 60 days it will be completely erased from all of Google’s servers (including offline backup servers)

However, as with any online storage solution there is always potential for some kind of security vulnerability. If for any reason you are not comfortable having your papers and grades handled in this manner, please contact me and we will discuss alternative methods for handling your grades.

You are always entitled in this class to opt out of any of the above mentioned procedures, and you can in no way be penalized for exercising this option. Please contact me if you would like to discuss alternative paper submission and grading options.

If you have questions or concerns about how Google handles information stored on their servers, you may read Google’s general privacy policy here and you can read their privacy policy concerning Google Documents here. You may also read about your intellectual property rights with respect to items stored on Google Server in Google’s Terms of Service (under section 11)