For many families, next week represents a few key things:

• A shorter work week because of Labour Day (bonus!);
• The end of summer holidays and warmer weather, and finally, most importantly,
• Back-to-school.

What kinds of issues arise when you think about privacy and the classroom?

Well, Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner Ronald Kruzeniski, who doesn’t generate all that much regular press, made a timely and interesting headline late last week. CBC News covered a recent ruling by the commissioner that the personal information about disciplined teachers should be withheld to protect their privacy. Check it out.

I hope schools have sorted things out since the coming-into-force of CASL, the new anti-spam law, earlier this summer. I know several people received consent forms from their kids’ schools about parental communications, and it caused quite a bit of confusion since the organizations sending them aren’t even subject to CASL. I hope the schools continue to send information to parents, regardless of whether they opted in. And hopefully as more time goes by, it will become clearer to organizations who is covered and who isn’t and what that law requires.

I also hope that in the agendas that kids bring home from school, we’ll see more in their teachers’ learning plans about digital literacy and privacy. Our kids are so lucky to be able to benefit from all the new tools and gadgets that are out there to assist in their learning. But many of these tools come with important privacy considerations; as privacy professionals, we know that well. We definitely need to teach these important principles at home, but I think learning about privacy and digital literacy in the classroom is also important in this day and age.

Now, before you get into the swing of things with the new season before us, if you haven’t seen it already, check out this back-to-school video that has been going viral, and enjoy! There’s no privacy in there, but it’s great fun anyway.