Microsoft protects student privacy, while encouraging innovation

| Vanessa Ho

Cloud-based tools help create rich, personalized instruction in schools, but pose tough challenges for student and family privacy, writes Cameron Evans, chief technology officer for Microsoft Education.

“In order for personalized learning to be more than a hollow promise, technology must be used to gather personal information from students,” Evans writes Tuesday in the Microsoft in Education Blog. “But how that data is handled matters.”

He says Microsoft is committed to helping schools find the right balance between protecting privacy and encouraging innovation. It was among the first companies to sign a “Student Privacy Pledge” on collecting and using student data.

Services such as Bing for Schools and Office 365 also safeguard student privacy, with guarantees that no student data is mined for ads.

To learn more, go to the Microsoft in Education Blog.

Vanessa Ho
Microsoft News Center Staff

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