The article below talks about the impact of relying on services like the recently shut-down megaupload. I fear that we rely on outside, 3rd party, services similar to this all to often within the University. I am vocal about my strong feelings against relying on services like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Survey Monkey, Drop Box, etc for classroom use. Some of those services have policy/legal implications and violate FERPA, but that’s for another discussion.
I am opposed to services like this simply because no one can guarantee that they will exist tomorrow, but I do guarantee that you will need a way to deliver materials to student tomorrow. There are campus hosted alternatives for most of what makes those 3rd party services attractive. The University hosts blog sites (my.ilstu.edu) which can allow for an instructor to easily post content accessible to students and allow for some feedback from them, this could alleviate the desire to use social media outlets in class. A possible alternative for uploading video to YouTube is using the ISU flash media server. This will allow you to post videos to a standard website which you could build on your own and host through your datastore account or by requesting a site through CAS-IT: Training and Projects, which you will have the ability to maintain. Survey Monkey is easy to use but their privacy policy claims that they own any data you collect and can use or sell it as they please. CAS-IT: Training and Projects hosts a similar online survey system that actually has much more abilities and is secured. Finally, a decent alternative to Drop Box is your private drive or the Communication Shared drive. Your private drive is for you only. Anyone with a ULID can be granted access to the Communication Shared drive. WZND is using the Shared Drive to keep their files accessible from anywhere within the station and to promote easier sharing among the students, Field Experiences is using the Shared Drive as a drop box for interns to submit reflective essays and receive feedback on those, and Creative Services is using the Shared Drive to create archives and share files between current interns doing graphic design work for the School. Access to the shared drive is ULID based and highly controllable. We even have a student web server available that is used for our COM 366 web design sections.
If you are using a 3rd party service, I would highly suggest you think about a few things:
- Did you have to agree to terms & conditions to sign up for the service? If so, you violated campus policy that specifically denies the ability of any one to agree to a legally binding contract on behalf of the University.
- Do you have a back up plan? If you are hosting a website that you rely on for your class and it disappears tomorrow without warning, what will you do?
- Is there confidential student information being distributed on non-ISU servers? A grade book on Drop Box or Google Docs is a violation of FERPA. Uploading files with grades or other personal student info to non-ISU servers is out of our control and subject to attack or theft beyond our capabilities.
Read the article that started this rant: What Megaupload Teaches Us About the Cloud, SOPA and Backups.
