Privacy, Data & Accessibility
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Privacy, Data & Accessibility / Joining without an account
Joining without an account
A learner never has to make an account, give a name or an email address to learn on TeachForge. What each kind of link asks for, and what it keeps.
Open the link. That is all a learner has to do.
The rule
On TeachForge a learner is never required to identify themselves in order to learn. There is no learner sign-up form, and no part of a lesson waits for a name, an email address or a date of birth. A teacher can choose to keep a learner's work against a class record, and even then the record holds a handle the teacher chose, never who the learner is.
There are two kinds of link a learner can be given. Both work without an account.
A plain link
A plain link, such as a delivery's direct link or a shared lab link, asks for nothing. The learner opens it and starts. Nothing is saved to anyone's name.
On a Quest Ladder delivery, plays through a plain link are counted together as Anonymous link plays. The teacher sees how many there were and how they went, not who played.
A plain link suits a one-off activity, a demonstration on the board in the room, or anything where you do not need to follow one learner's progress.
A personal class link
When a teacher adds a learner to a class, the learner gets a link of their own. The first time they open it they see Set your password: "You'll use it every time you open your link on a new device, and at the start of each activity." The password needs At least 8 characters, and it cannot be the learner's student ID.
After that, opening an activity shows Enter your password with "So we know it's you", followed by the learner's handle. The password is how TeachForge keeps one learner's work from being saved under another's handle on a shared computer.
Continue without saving is always there. It asks "Your work won't be saved to your name. Continue anyway?", and the learner can carry on with the activity anyway. Nobody is turned away for not wanting their work kept.
If a learner forgets the password, the teacher resets it and sends a new link. A reset ends the activity that is open with the old password.
What a class holds
For each learner, a class holds:
- a handle, the student ID the teacher gives them;
- an optional alias, a display name the teacher chooses;
- an optional internal reference, for the teacher's own records;
- the password the learner set.
It never holds a learner's real name, email address or date of birth. If a teacher wants to know which handle is which child, that list stays with the teacher, outside TeachForge. Student identity explains handles and aliases in more detail, and How a student joins walks through the learner's side step by step.
Boards
A shared whiteboard can be joined by its link. The board's owner can switch on Require name on join. A visitor then sees "You need a name to join this board. A nickname is fine." Any name will do: it is shown to the others on the board, and it is not checked against anything.
Virtual Labs and Workshop
A lab or a Workshop activity opened by a plain link records nothing to anyone's name. Opened from a class link, it says which applies at the top: Saving your work as the learner's handle, or Not saving this session if the learner chose to continue without saving.
For teachers
- Choose handles that do not spell out a name. Initials and a number, or a word and a number, work well.
- Use a plain link when you only need to know how the class did overall.
- If you teach through a learning platform, the platform's own student ID can be used as the handle. Connecting your learning platform explains how.
Who can see a learner's work, and how it is taken back, is in Who sees the work, and taking it back.