Some more piracy (I mean privacy)

Author	Message
code { dwarf } Send message Joined: 20 Jan 07 Poland Credit: 709.5 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jan 20, 2007 Verified: NEVER Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 2	Message 4811 - Posted: 30 Jan 2007 \| 16:07:40 UTC
Assuming the crew cannot post to the Wish List anymore, comments may be directed here.
ID: 4811 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Contact Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 29 Aug 04 Canada BOINC Synergy Credit: 26,644.6 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Aug 29, 2004 Verified: Nov 10, 2011 Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 3 Punishment: Misfit	Message 4813 - Posted: 30 Jan 2007 \| 17:02:36 UTC Last modified: 30 Jan 2007 \| 17:08:59 UTC
Yep, I'm not allowed to post a reply on the Wish List now. I can create a new thread! ____________ Click and enter your name for your BOINC Statistics
ID: 4813 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Scott Brown Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 25 Jul 04 United States Duke University Credit: 38,955.3 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jul 25, 2004 Verified: Oct 7, 2011 Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 11 Punishment: Keel Haul	Message 4817 - Posted: 30 Jan 2007 \| 17:33:09 UTC - in response to Message 4813.
Yep, I'm not allowed to post a reply on the Wish List now. I can create a new thread! Same here (tried it to see if the different rankings might be in effect since I dropped down to "Seaman").
ID: 4817 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Scott Brown Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 25 Jul 04 United States Duke University Credit: 38,955.3 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jul 25, 2004 Verified: Oct 7, 2011 Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 11 Punishment: Keel Haul	Message 4821 - Posted: 30 Jan 2007 \| 17:45:39 UTC - in response to Message 4817.
Yep, I'm not allowed to post a reply on the Wish List now. I can create a new thread! Same here (tried it to see if the different rankings might be in effect since I dropped down to "Seaman"). Okay, now thread creation is completely locked down also. Interestingly, when logged out I can still see the original post in the wish list, but not any replies?
ID: 4821 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

RDC Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 18 Jan 06 United States BOINC Synergy Credit: 3,404.4 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jan 18, 2006 Verified: NEVER Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 9 Punishment: Canon Fodder	Message 4828 - Posted: 31 Jan 2007 \| 8:08:40 UTC
Since comments to the privacy issue should be posted here, here are my comments. As there seems to be issues dealing with underage students and their identity, is there anyway to just not show the student names (and possible signatures) on the posts unless your logged in? I have no idea if it is possible to make a change like that easily but it would solve that problem immediately since you would have to have an account in order to see the names. Presumably, only authorized individuals (students, mods and admins) would be able to have accounts, it that correct? ____________
ID: 4828 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Wormholio Captain Send message Joined: 6 Jun 04 United States Away Credit: 4,009.8 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jun 6, 2004 Verified: Mar 13, 2008 Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 10 Punishment: Aztec curse	Message 4829 - Posted: 31 Jan 2007 \| 13:03:06 UTC - in response to Message 4828.
As there seems to be issues dealing with underage students and their identity, is there anyway to just not show the student names (and possible signatures) on the posts unless your logged in? That is certainly a good place to start, even if it does not solve the whole problem. And is should be relatively easy to implement, once I dig in to it. It's easy to tell if the viewer is not logged in, and then we would not show the sig. How much of the author block would be shown, if any at all? Perhaps a big shadow for the avatar? And just the userid to distinguish the person? Or is even that too much? There is also some concern about who can see what even internally. An administrator at one school may not like the idea that students at another school can see information about his/her students. But I'd like to facilitate collaboration between students at different schools, and working with someone you only know as a shadow and a number is not as useful as working with someone you know a little about, even if it's a screen name and avatar. So another idea I'm toying with is having both real names and screen names, and both a real picture ("headshot") and an avatar. So there are now 3 levels of information about the person. Then we need some way of determining what to show to who. If it's a fixed, closed policy, then it's not very useful. (eg. no student can see anything about a student at another school - hence it's hard for them to collaborate). It would be better if it could be configured to allow for different policies. But then it gets complicated, and you have to be sure there are not any loopholes or back doors. But not showing personal information to someone who is not logged in may be the best place to start, so I'll likely try it out. Thanks. ____________ -- Eric Myers "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
ID: 4829 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

RDC Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 18 Jan 06 United States BOINC Synergy Credit: 3,404.4 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jan 18, 2006 Verified: NEVER Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 9 Punishment: Canon Fodder	Message 4832 - Posted: 31 Jan 2007 \| 20:09:42 UTC - in response to Message 4829.
So another idea I'm toying with is having both real names and screen names, and both a real picture ("headshot") and an avatar. So there are now 3 levels of information about the person. Then we need some way of determining what to show to who. If it's a fixed, closed policy, then it's not very useful. (eg. no student can see anything about a student at another school - hence it's hard for them to collaborate). It would be better if it could be configured to allow for different policies. But then it gets complicated, and you have to be sure there are not any loopholes or back doors. How I see this working is as follows (a rough idea): A data base field would need to be added to differentiate the schools with a unique school code. That unique school code would be applied to each student who registers so that they are coded to their school and cross linked to the topics that they can see. Students would only see and post threads to the topics that are assigned the that school code as well as only seeing their school information. Sub adminisrators could create topics only for their school code. The Master Administrator would be able to assign multiple codes, through the administration screen, to the topics to allow multiple schools to participate if needed which would allow veiwing for multiple assigned schools. So for example, sub administrators from school "A" could create topics only available to students of school "A" and sub administrators from school "B" could create topics available only to students of school "B". If there was a project that involved multiple schools, then the master account administrator could assign the topic to both school "A" and "B". By only allowing the master administrator access to cross link, it reduces the problem of privacy issues between the schools and limits who is able to make the changes. It does sound like this would be a coding nightmare to address the concern however but it limits who can allow people from various schools to see each other's information. ____________
ID: 4832 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Scott Brown Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 25 Jul 04 United States Duke University Credit: 38,955.3 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jul 25, 2004 Verified: Oct 7, 2011 Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 11 Punishment: Keel Haul	Message 4834 - Posted: 31 Jan 2007 \| 21:57:53 UTC - in response to Message 4832.
How I see this working is as follows (a rough idea): ... I would propose a slightly modified structure based on this one. I could envision that the actual educational process would be more topic-based rather than school based. Thus, a structure that allows sub-admins to sign up entire schools for specific topics might need to be added as a layer (perhaps in a way that sub-admins submit proposed topics that only the master admins can create?). I am also curious if the issue of student-age/minor status has been considered. Many high school-aged students in the US have the legal right to allow others to view private material (all 18 year-olds and some 17 and 16 depending on the state). I wonder if this adds yet another layer (or at least database field) to the mix?
ID: 4834 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Wormholio Captain Send message Joined: 6 Jun 04 United States Away Credit: 4,009.8 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jun 6, 2004 Verified: Mar 13, 2008 Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 10 Punishment: Aztec curse	Message 4837 - Posted: 1 Feb 2007 \| 2:28:19 UTC
Right now I'm using the BOINC teams to represent the schools. This fails if a teacher or student attends more than one school (as I did in high school), but let's put that aside for now. The idea then would be that each "team" has a policy for the exposure of information to the other teams. Is that policy to be applied to all teams (ie one number) or to each other team individually (which makes for a very large matrix)? Or instead of the whole team, maybe a single teacher wants to modify the policy just for a given forum/room? Can they? Completely or only within certain parameters? I see this getting complicated. The legal rights of students are not as important (for these considerations, at least) as the legal reponsibilities the schools have (or feel they have) to protect student information. And that, on the whole, is good. We'd like to be able to make this available to 9th graders, not just seniors. And maybe younger, once it's working. It's important to provide some sort of shield for younger users. The ironic thing is to see how many students are putting personal information on Facebook or myspace these days. But those sites are now also struggling to deal with similar privacy issues, and they are in the social networking business, not the science education business. ____________ -- Eric Myers "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
ID: 4837 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

RDC Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 18 Jan 06 United States BOINC Synergy Credit: 3,404.4 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jan 18, 2006 Verified: NEVER Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 9 Punishment: Canon Fodder	Message 4841 - Posted: 1 Feb 2007 \| 3:04:09 UTC
The big question is this. How much personal information is going to be required and of what type? Being required to be logged to see any information helps but I'm starting to wonder what kind of information they will require. First name, first letter of last name or a screen name and school name should be sufficient. If they're planning on having age, SS number addresses and so on, then it gets tricky and really shouldn't be displayed in the first place nor should it even be in the database. ____________
ID: 4841 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Wormholio Captain Send message Joined: 6 Jun 04 United States Away Credit: 4,009.8 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jun 6, 2004 Verified: Mar 13, 2008 Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 10 Punishment: Aztec curse	Message 4842 - Posted: 1 Feb 2007 \| 3:39:29 UTC - in response to Message 4841.
The big question is this. How much personal information is going to be required and of what type? All I want to show is basically what we have here, but with real names, a real picture, your school instead of your team, and your state in place of your country (it's a US based project, at least for now). The point being that this facilitates remote collaboration with someone you have not met. A little bit of personalizing information adds to the experience. It doesn't have to be a lot, just enough to distinguish one person from another by a little bit. Of course as we are demonstrating now that can also work even if people don't know their "real" names, so it may be that a "screen-name" and an avatar are enough. My thinking though was that for a school activity using your real name is more appropriate, and using a screen-name for school sounds sketchy. Maybe that's backwards. ____________ -- Eric Myers "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
ID: 4842 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Wormholio Captain Send message Joined: 6 Jun 04 United States Away Credit: 4,009.8 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jun 6, 2004 Verified: Mar 13, 2008 Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 10 Punishment: Aztec curse	Message 4847 - Posted: 1 Feb 2007 \| 13:29:18 UTC - in response to Message 4834.
I would propose a slightly modified structure based on this one. I could envision that the actual educational process would be more topic-based rather than school based. This is sort of what's happening, and sort of a part of the problem. The original project which started this is [[w:QuarkNet]], in which schools maintain a cosmic ray detector, upload their data to a central server, and then can download data from all detectors to do interesting investigations. It's sort of a YouTube for cosmic ray data, and it's a great idea. So now the folks who started QuarkNet have invited other physics experiments to join in and do something similar. Instead of a distributed network of detectors, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN and the STAR experiment at Brookhaven will allow students to download some of their data and use that for investigations. LIGO will make data available from environmental sensors like seismometers and weather stations. So there would certainly be a variety of topics, and schools could participate in one or several of them. But the complication I am worrying about is that different schools might have different ideas about how much identifying information can be shown about a student, even to other schools. It may be that each school can only see participants from their own school. It may be that students can only interact with their lab partner and the teacher and nobody else. (I think this is how QuarkNet is set up now, but don't quote me on it.) The thing is, I've seen from BOINC projects how valuable it can be to allow for wider remote collaboration. Einstein@Home is a great example of that, for many reasons, but even what goes on here on this ship shows what is possible (people working together to figure something out). I'd like to find a way to make that a part of the whole package that schools can use. But the privacy issue is going to be important, and in the end maybe it's a show-stopper. I hope not. ____________ -- Eric Myers "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
ID: 4847 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Scott Brown Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 25 Jul 04 United States Duke University Credit: 38,955.3 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jul 25, 2004 Verified: Oct 7, 2011 Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 11 Punishment: Keel Haul	Message 4849 - Posted: 1 Feb 2007 \| 13:57:30 UTC - in response to Message 4847.
The thing is, I've seen from BOINC projects how valuable it can be to allow for wider remote collaboration. Einstein@Home is a great example of that, for many reasons, but even what goes on here on this ship shows what is possible (people working together to figure something out). I'd like to find a way to make that a part of the whole package that schools can use. But the privacy issue is going to be important, and in the end maybe it's a show-stopper. I hope not. I agree with you completely that the remote collaboration that is characteristic of BOINC projects would defintely add to the educational experience of such projects. Perhaps there can be a lessoned learned from social science research here that might help with privavcy issues. Alternative ID's (or pseudonyms, etc. which seem to be one issue that you are focused on) are one way that anonymity or confidentiality are maintained in epidemilogic data, but others are sometimes used. The one that I think might apply best here is the use of aggregation to eliminate deductive identification in such datasets (e.g., only allowing reports to go down to the county level rather than census blocks or tracts). For the problem here, one might envision a combination of the pseudonym method and aggregation. For example, if you required a public pseudonym (and avatar) from users in addition to the actual names and pictures as you have suggested in earlier posts and then combined this with some actual public geographic location then you might gain the best of both worlds: privacy of student data and better collaborative efforts as participants can place the pseudonym with a real, though general, location (e.g., perhaps as specific as the participating school, or more generally the county or state location).
ID: 4849 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

RDC Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 18 Jan 06 United States BOINC Synergy Credit: 3,404.4 RAC: 0.00 Joined: Jan 18, 2006 Verified: NEVER Dubloons: 3 Pieces of Eight: 9 Punishment: Canon Fodder	Message 4860 - Posted: 2 Feb 2007 \| 1:12:01 UTC
To be honest, I'd keep it at a bare minimum and for options like avatars and signatures, leave it up to each individual school to decide if they will allow the items to be displayed or if they want to leave them turned off. A future release could include an option to allow avatars and sigs in school and to turn them off when cross schools but for now, I'd just give the administration the option to display avatars and sigs or to turn them off, period. Given that you have entire school districts that completely cave to the complaints of 1 or 2 parents (out of thousands) these days, it probably is better to initially just to give the administration the option to turn it on or off and keep personal information in "minamalist" mode. I thought about this today after reading of yet another cave in to 2 parents by the school board in the rather large school district in my area as they are offended by a single paragraph in a history book. Your going to have to have a name/nickname and a school/team name if this is to work at all at minimum. The other things are nice to have but really are optional at this stage of the game. ____________
ID: 4860 \| Rating: 0 \| rate: / Reply Quote

Author

Message

code { dwarf }
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 20 Jan 07

Poland
Credit: 709.5
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jan 20, 2007
Verified: NEVER
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 2

Assuming the crew cannot post to the Wish List anymore, comments may be directed here.

ID: 4811 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Contact
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 29 Aug 04

Canada
BOINC Synergy
Credit: 26,644.6
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Aug 29, 2004
Verified: Nov 10, 2011
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 3
Punishment: Misfit

Yep, I'm not allowed to post a reply on the Wish List now.
I can create a new thread!
____________

Click and enter your name for your BOINC Statistics

ID: 4813 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Scott Brown
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 25 Jul 04

United States
Duke University
Credit: 38,955.3
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jul 25, 2004
Verified: Oct 7, 2011
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 11
Punishment: Keel Haul

Yep, I'm not allowed to post a reply on the Wish List now.
I can create a new thread!

Same here (tried it to see if the different rankings might be in effect since I dropped down to "Seaman").

ID: 4817 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Scott Brown
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 25 Jul 04

United States
Duke University
Credit: 38,955.3
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jul 25, 2004
Verified: Oct 7, 2011
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 11
Punishment: Keel Haul

Yep, I'm not allowed to post a reply on the Wish List now.
I can create a new thread!

Same here (tried it to see if the different rankings might be in effect since I dropped down to "Seaman").

Okay, now thread creation is completely locked down also.

Interestingly, when logged out I can still see the original post in the wish list, but not any replies?

ID: 4821 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

RDC
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 18 Jan 06

United States
BOINC Synergy
Credit: 3,404.4
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jan 18, 2006
Verified: NEVER
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 9
Punishment: Canon Fodder

Since comments to the privacy issue should be posted here, here are my comments.

As there seems to be issues dealing with underage students and their identity, is there anyway to just not show the student names (and possible signatures) on the posts unless your logged in?

I have no idea if it is possible to make a change like that easily but it would solve that problem immediately since you would have to have an account in order to see the names. Presumably, only authorized individuals (students, mods and admins) would be able to have accounts, it that correct?

____________

ID: 4828 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Wormholio
Captain
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 6 Jun 04

United States
Away
Credit: 4,009.8
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jun 6, 2004
Verified: Mar 13, 2008
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 10
Punishment: Aztec curse

As there seems to be issues dealing with underage students and their identity, is there anyway to just not show the student names (and possible signatures) on the posts unless your logged in?

That is certainly a good place to start, even if it does not solve the whole problem. And is should be relatively easy to implement, once I dig in to it. It's easy to tell if the viewer is not logged in, and then we would not show the sig. How much of the author block would be shown, if any at all? Perhaps a big shadow for the avatar? And just the userid to distinguish the person? Or is even that too much?

There is also some concern about who can see what even internally. An administrator at one school may not like the idea that students at another school can see information about his/her students. But I'd like to facilitate collaboration between students at different schools, and working with someone you only know as a shadow and a number is not as useful as working with someone you know a little about, even if it's a screen name and avatar.

So another idea I'm toying with is having both real names and screen names, and both a real picture ("headshot") and an avatar. So there are now 3 levels of information about the person. Then we need some way of determining what to show to who. If it's a fixed, closed policy, then it's not very useful. (eg. no student can see anything about a student at another school - hence it's hard for them to collaborate). It would be better if it could be configured to allow for different policies. But then it gets complicated, and you have to be sure there are not any loopholes or back doors.

But not showing personal information to someone who is not logged in may be the best place to start, so I'll likely try it out. Thanks.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

ID: 4829 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

RDC
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 18 Jan 06

United States
BOINC Synergy
Credit: 3,404.4
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jan 18, 2006
Verified: NEVER
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 9
Punishment: Canon Fodder

So another idea I'm toying with is having both real names and screen names, and both a real picture ("headshot") and an avatar. So there are now 3 levels of information about the person. Then we need some way of determining what to show to who. If it's a fixed, closed policy, then it's not very useful. (eg. no student can see anything about a student at another school - hence it's hard for them to collaborate). It would be better if it could be configured to allow for different policies. But then it gets complicated, and you have to be sure there are not any loopholes or back doors.

How I see this working is as follows (a rough idea):

A data base field would need to be added to differentiate the schools with a unique school code. That unique school code would be applied to each student who registers so that they are coded to their school and cross linked to the topics that they can see.

Students would only see and post threads to the topics that are assigned the that school code as well as only seeing their school information.

Sub adminisrators could create topics only for their school code.

The Master Administrator would be able to assign multiple codes, through the administration screen, to the topics to allow multiple schools to participate if needed which would allow veiwing for multiple assigned schools.

So for example, sub administrators from school "A" could create topics only available to students of school "A" and sub administrators from school "B" could create topics available only to students of school "B". If there was a project that involved multiple schools, then the master account administrator could assign the topic to both school "A" and "B".

By only allowing the master administrator access to cross link, it reduces the problem of privacy issues between the schools and limits who is able to make the changes. It does sound like this would be a coding nightmare to address the concern however but it limits who can allow people from various schools to see each other's information.
____________

ID: 4832 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Scott Brown
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 25 Jul 04

United States
Duke University
Credit: 38,955.3
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jul 25, 2004
Verified: Oct 7, 2011
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 11
Punishment: Keel Haul

How I see this working is as follows (a rough idea): ...

I would propose a slightly modified structure based on this one. I could envision that the actual educational process would be more topic-based rather than school based. Thus, a structure that allows sub-admins to sign up entire schools for specific topics might need to be added as a layer (perhaps in a way that sub-admins submit proposed topics that only the master admins can create?).

I am also curious if the issue of student-age/minor status has been considered. Many high school-aged students in the US have the legal right to allow others to view private material (all 18 year-olds and some 17 and 16 depending on the state). I wonder if this adds yet another layer (or at least database field) to the mix?

ID: 4834 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Wormholio
Captain
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 6 Jun 04

United States
Away
Credit: 4,009.8
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jun 6, 2004
Verified: Mar 13, 2008
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 10
Punishment: Aztec curse

Right now I'm using the BOINC teams to represent the schools. This fails if a teacher or student attends more than one school (as I did in high school), but let's put that aside for now.

The idea then would be that each "team" has a policy for the exposure of information to the other teams. Is that policy to be applied to all teams (ie one number) or to each other team individually (which makes for a very large matrix)?

Or instead of the whole team, maybe a single teacher wants to modify the policy just for a given forum/room? Can they? Completely or only within certain parameters? I see this getting complicated.

The legal rights of students are not as important (for these considerations, at least) as the legal reponsibilities the schools have (or feel they have) to protect student information. And that, on the whole, is good. We'd like to be able to make this available to 9th graders, not just seniors. And maybe younger, once it's working. It's important to provide some sort of shield for younger users.

The ironic thing is to see how many students are putting personal information on Facebook or myspace these days. But those sites are now also struggling to deal with similar privacy issues, and they are in the social networking business, not the science education business.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

ID: 4837 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

RDC
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 18 Jan 06

United States
BOINC Synergy
Credit: 3,404.4
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jan 18, 2006
Verified: NEVER
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 9
Punishment: Canon Fodder

The big question is this. How much personal information is going to be required and of what type?

Being required to be logged to see any information helps but I'm starting to wonder what kind of information they will require. First name, first letter of last name or a screen name and school name should be sufficient. If they're planning on having age, SS number addresses and so on, then it gets tricky and really shouldn't be displayed in the first place nor should it even be in the database.

____________

ID: 4841 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Wormholio
Captain
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 6 Jun 04

United States
Away
Credit: 4,009.8
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jun 6, 2004
Verified: Mar 13, 2008
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 10
Punishment: Aztec curse

The big question is this. How much personal information is going to be required and of what type?

All I want to show is basically what we have here, but with real names, a real picture, your school instead of your team, and your state in place of your country (it's a US based project, at least for now).

The point being that this facilitates remote collaboration with someone you have not met. A little bit of personalizing information adds to the experience. It doesn't have to be a lot, just enough to distinguish one person from another by a little bit.

Of course as we are demonstrating now that can also work even if people don't know their "real" names, so it may be that a "screen-name" and an avatar are enough.

My thinking though was that for a school activity using your real name is more appropriate, and using a screen-name for school sounds sketchy. Maybe that's backwards.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

ID: 4842 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Wormholio
Captain
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 6 Jun 04

United States
Away
Credit: 4,009.8
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jun 6, 2004
Verified: Mar 13, 2008
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 10
Punishment: Aztec curse

I would propose a slightly modified structure based on this one. I could envision that the actual educational process would be more topic-based rather than school based.

This is sort of what's happening, and sort of a part of the problem. The original project which started this is [[w:QuarkNet]], in which schools maintain a cosmic ray detector, upload their data to a central server, and then can download data from all detectors to do interesting investigations. It's sort of a YouTube for cosmic ray data, and it's a great idea.

So now the folks who started QuarkNet have invited other physics experiments to join in and do something similar. Instead of a distributed network of detectors, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN and the STAR experiment at Brookhaven will allow students to download some of their data and use that for investigations. LIGO will make data available from environmental sensors like seismometers and weather stations. So there would certainly be a variety of topics, and schools could participate in one or several of them.

But the complication I am worrying about is that different schools might have different ideas about how much identifying information can be shown about a student, even to other schools. It may be that each school can only see participants from their own school. It may be that students can only interact with their lab partner and the teacher and nobody else. (I think this is how QuarkNet is set up now, but don't quote me on it.)

The thing is, I've seen from BOINC projects how valuable it can be to allow for wider remote collaboration. Einstein@Home is a great example of that, for many reasons, but even what goes on here on this ship shows what is possible (people working together to figure something out). I'd like to find a way to make that a part of the whole package that schools can use. But the privacy issue is going to be important, and in the end maybe it's a show-stopper. I hope not.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

ID: 4847 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Scott Brown
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 25 Jul 04

United States
Duke University
Credit: 38,955.3
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jul 25, 2004
Verified: Oct 7, 2011
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 11
Punishment: Keel Haul

The thing is, I've seen from BOINC projects how valuable it can be to allow for wider remote collaboration. Einstein@Home is a great example of that, for many reasons, but even what goes on here on this ship shows what is possible (people working together to figure something out). I'd like to find a way to make that a part of the whole package that schools can use. But the privacy issue is going to be important, and in the end maybe it's a show-stopper. I hope not.

I agree with you completely that the remote collaboration that is characteristic of BOINC projects would defintely add to the educational experience of such projects. Perhaps there can be a lessoned learned from social science research here that might help with privavcy issues. Alternative ID's (or pseudonyms, etc. which seem to be one issue that you are focused on) are one way that anonymity or confidentiality are maintained in epidemilogic data, but others are sometimes used. The one that I think might apply best here is the use of aggregation to eliminate deductive identification in such datasets (e.g., only allowing reports to go down to the county level rather than census blocks or tracts).

For the problem here, one might envision a combination of the pseudonym method and aggregation. For example, if you required a public pseudonym (and avatar) from users in addition to the actual names and pictures as you have suggested in earlier posts and then combined this with some actual public geographic location then you might gain the best of both worlds: privacy of student data and better collaborative efforts as participants can place the pseudonym with a real, though general, location (e.g., perhaps as specific as the participating school, or more generally the county or state location).

ID: 4849 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

RDC
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 18 Jan 06

United States
BOINC Synergy
Credit: 3,404.4
RAC: 0.00

Joined: Jan 18, 2006
Verified: NEVER
Dubloons: 3
Pieces of Eight: 9
Punishment: Canon Fodder

To be honest, I'd keep it at a bare minimum and for options like avatars and signatures, leave it up to each individual school to decide if they will allow the items to be displayed or if they want to leave them turned off.

A future release could include an option to allow avatars and sigs in school and to turn them off when cross schools but for now, I'd just give the administration the option to display avatars and sigs or to turn them off, period.

Given that you have entire school districts that completely cave to the complaints of 1 or 2 parents (out of thousands) these days, it probably is better to initially just to give the administration the option to turn it on or off and keep personal information in "minamalist" mode. I thought about this today after reading of yet another cave in to 2 parents by the school board in the rather large school district in my area as they are offended by a single paragraph in a history book.

Your going to have to have a name/nickname and a school/team name if this is to work at all at minimum. The other things are nice to have but really are optional at this stage of the game.

____________

ID: 4860 | Rating: 0 | rate:

Reply Quote

Post to thread