I have experience in this vertical. There is so much to tell about it. We market a product directly to K-12 schools and never, not once, has a school even asked

I have experience in this vertical. There is so much to tell about it. We market a product directly to K-12 schools and never, not once, has a school even asked us, let alone demanded, that student data is handled properly. There is a severe knowledge gap between educators and technologists. Educators see marketing materials about electronic courseware and quickly see the benefits. Which are huge. There is not only adaptive learning, there is learning on the student's own time, the computer is infinitely patient and offers text, video, interactive quizzes, built-in standardised grading, you name it. It's hard to oversell the great fit between education and technology. So what happens is that schools engage with this without asking if there are any drawbacks. This is likely to cause problems in the future. Knewton CEO Jose Ferreira is quoted saying “I’m not calling your child a bundle of data. I’m just helping her learn.” And this is 100% true. I absolutely believe he is sincere as are so many other technologists. The point is, what happens when this data is bundled, sold, hacked into, leaked and used in not-appropriate ways? We just don't know but it's almost certain that it won't all be benign. So a little apprehension is in order. There is stronger protection for children in the EU than in the US, but it almost doesn't matter. Schools don't enforce rigorous data policies--they don't even know they have to. There are laws in place, but the law is widely ignored, no matter what jurisdiction. So right now, protection of children's data is in the hands of the technology companies. If you have good intentions, ask what data you really need. After evaluation, we now only require name + email for our program and nothing else. We stopped asking for gender and anything else that's not needed. I think it would be helpful if a gliding scale were implemented. Does your technology just use basic info like email? You have more freedom to operate. Do you ask for gender or religion? You're subject to more scrutiny. Do you store the big stuff like social/developmental problems? You have to be HIPPAA/FERPA compliant, etc. Right now though, there are no market or regulatory forces in place to make this happen, it's sort of a wild west.