[senit] e-safety & data protection

hi, the government is heavily promoting e-safety at
the moment and also promoting VLEs/personal learning
spaces. A few VLEs I have seen have included
children's photos and full names & classes and show
them engaged in a range of exciting activities. When I
ran an SLD school website this was the aspect that
parents and teachers were most interested in- photos
of their children engaged in school activities. And
the aspect which the children were most interested in.
However only 50% of parents gave their permission for
children (not named) to be on the website. A recent
seminar on vodcasts- video podcasts -enthused on the
value of children seeing themselves on screen. With
VLEs is it the case that the child at home will be
accessing such a school or class-type environment and
thus having access from home to all these aspects
across the school? This would in fact be great for the
child's learning and feeling part of the school. I
know you can make VLE rooms only accessible to certain
people if you want to. Thus many/most VLEs would make
most rooms inaccessible to general members of the
public using the internet I guess. However from the
perspective of parents- they may want to see their
child engaged in learning in photos etc but not want
other parents/others to. So when people talk about the
"personal learning space" that each child is supposed
to get, and that it will be accessible by their
parents, won't it also mean that it will be also
potentially accessible by a whole range of other
people? That is about the shared learning aspects of a
VLE. Will any of this mean that some parents won't
allow their child's photo to be on the VLE? Further on
the e-portfolio aspect of a VLE. This could show work
and not photos or video of a child. However with
students with PMLD often it is the video that captures
learning , and not any product that could be put in an
e-portfolio. So who would have access to the the
e-portfolio aspects of a VLE? presumably the parents,
and the many staff in the school who work with that
child, but maybe not other parents? Maybe other
validating bodies such as ASDAN eventually? 
David

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