Learning Without Tears’ Commitment to Your Privacy: Canada
Effective Date: January, 01, 2023
Learning Without Tears (“Learning Without Tears”, “We” or “Us”), understands that privacy is really important to our online visitors to our website (“Website Visitors”), to school districts or schools or educational organizations in Canada who register for our Services (“You” or “Organization”), and to students or end users whose information we may access on behalf of you or your organization (“End User”). Privacy is really important to us, too. This privacy policy applies to our website, https://lwtears.com and to our Services (“Services”) and describes the steps we take to protect your or your organization’s data under Canadian law. Also, as you may know, student data and privacy laws sometimes vary from Province to Province. When a specific Province’s law applies to your or your organization’s use of our Services, we will provide you or your organization with Province-specific guarantees to ensure that our privacy policy and data use practices comply with the laws and regulations that apply in your Province.
Click on the links below to jump to each section.
- How We Collect and Use Data
- How We Comply With Student Data and Privacy Laws
- Collecting and Sharing Data
- How We Store and Protect Data
- Children’s Privacy
- How to Contact Us
- Changes to Our Privacy Policy
1. How We Collect and Use Data
[Basically, we collect data to help us provide you with cool technologies. We want to be open with you about that, so read this section.]
In order to enhance our website and Services, we may collect the following types of information:
Information About Educational Organizations. We ask for certain information about you or your organization when you register with us to use our Services, including: school or organization name, teacher name, teacher information, e-mail. Once you or your organization begins using our Services, we will keep records of activities related to the Service. We use this information to operate, maintain, and enhance the features and functionality of the Services, to analyze our Service offerings and functionality, and to communicate with you or your organization.
Student Data. Learning Without Tears may have access to personally identifiable information and other non-public information about students as well as student-generated content and metadata (“Student Data”) in the course of providing its services to you or your organization. You or your organizations own the Student Data. We collect the following information about End Users in order to properly allocate licenses for and grant access to our Services: name, grade level, gender. We consider Student Data to be confidential and do not use such data for any purpose other than to provide the services to you or your organization. Learning Without Tears has access to Student Data only as requested by you or your organization and only for the purposes of performing Services for you or your organization.
Information Collected Through Technology. We automatically collect certain types of usage information when visitors view our website or use our service. We may send one or more cookies — a small text file containing a string of alphanumeric characters — to your computer that uniquely identifies your browser and helps to log you in faster and enhance your navigation through the site. A cookie may also convey information to us about how you use the Service (e.g., the pages you view, the links you click and other actions you take on the Service), and allow us to track your usage of the Service over time. We may collect log file information from your browser or mobile device each time you access the Service. Log file information may include anonymous information such as your web request, Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, information about your mobile device, number of clicks and how you interact with links on the Service, pages viewed, and other such information. We may employ clear gifs (also known as web beacons) which are used to anonymously track the online usage patterns of our Users. In addition, we may also use clear gifs in HTML-based emails sent to our Schools to track which emails are opened and which links are clicked by recipients. The information allows for more accurate reporting and improvement of the Service. We may also collect analytics data, or use third-party analytics tools, to help us measure traffic and usage trends for the Service. We do not allow third party advertising networks to collect information about the users of our Site or Service. We use or may use the data collected through cookies, log files, device identifiers, and clear gifs information to: (a) remember information so that a user will not have to re-enter it during subsequent visits; (b) provide custom, personalized content and information; (c) to provide and monitor the effectiveness of our Service; (d) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, and usage on our website and our Service; (e) diagnose or fix technology problems; and (f) help users efficiently access information after signing in.
Data De-Identification. We may de-identify and use de-identified Student Data for product development, research, or other purposes. De-identified data will have all direct personal identifiers removed. This includes, but is not limited to, name and ID numbers associated with an End User or Educational Organization. Furthermore, Learning Without Tears will not attempt to re-identify de-identified data or attempt to transfer de-identified data to any party unless that party agrees to not attempt re-identification.
To be clear, we only collect and use data as necessary to fulfill our duties with respect to the Services we provide to you or your organization.
2. How We Comply With Student Data and Privacy Laws
[Basically, we comply with all Canadian education laws that regulate your use of our digital products and services.]
This Privacy Policy considers our data practices that govern the access, use, retention, and deletion of the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of students to be of paramount importance to respecting and protecting the privacy and security of students. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”)’s central aim is to regulate and protect individuals’ privacy rights by establishing standardized rules for the handling of personal information, including obtaining consent, safeguarding data, and providing individuals with access to their own information. Our Services offered in Canada and our information and data use practices comply with PIPEDA.
PII
[Basically, PII is information that directly or indirectly identifies an individual.]
In the course of providing educational products and services to you or your organization, we may at times request and temporarily store certain types of personally identifying information about End Users in order to enable user login and license-based user access to selected applications in our suite of digital products and services. We will not require a licensed user to disclose more personally identifiable information (“PII”) than is reasonably necessary to use our digital products or services. To enable user login and access to our digital products and services, we collect basic account information (name, grade level) about users. We may also collect basic account information (school, teacher name, teacher e-mail) of designated school officials to enable their management of the student licenses. In the scenario in which a student may enter personally identifying information, we ask parents and educators to help us protect the privacy of students by instructing them to never provide personally identifying information without getting parental/guardian or teacher permission first. Please note that we consider student data, metadata, and user content as personally identifying information.
[Basically, we collect a limit set of data fields to provide our digital educational products and services to students and teachers. We don’t share any data unless required to by law or as a part of our internal business processes.]
Learning Without Tears may collect the following data fields in order to provide selected digital educational products and services to students and teachers:
Student Data Fields
- First Name (Required)
- Last Name (Required)
- Grade (Required)
- Email Address (Optional)
- SIS or District/School Unique ID (Optional)
- Organization Mapping (Required)
- Classroom Enrollment Data (Required)
Educator Data Fields
- First Name (Required)
- Last Name (Required)
- Email Address (Required)
- SIS or District/School Unique ID (Optional)
- Classroom Enrollment Data (Required if user is enrolled in classrooms)
- Organization Mapping and Roles (Required)
Learning Without Tears does not share Student Data with third-parties nor do we rent or sell any data or information for marketing purposes or to any third-party advertising networks.
Learning Without Tears only shares Student Data in two limited circumstances. First, we may share Student Data with those who provide us technology services (e.g. web hosting and analytics services) but strictly for the purpose of carrying out their work for us to enable us to provide Services to you or your organization. Second, we may be required to share information with law enforcement or other third parties when compelled to do so by court order or other legal process, to comply with statutes or regulations, to enforce our Terms of Service, or if we believe in good faith that the disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property or personal safety of our users.
4.How We Store and Protect Data
[Basically, we store our data using safe, secure, industry-standard methods. We delete or transfer your data at your direction if you decide to no longer use our Services.]
Learning Without Tears maintains strict administrative, technical, and physical procedures to protect stored in our servers, all of which are located in North America. Access to information is limited (through user/password protection and two factor authentication) to those employees who require it to perform their jobs. Also, we use industry-standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption technology to safeguard the account registration process and sign-up information. Our other security safeguards include but are not limited to: data encryption, firewalls, and physical access controls to buildings and files.
We will ensure that all data associated with your licensed accounts that is in our possession is destroyed or transferred to you or your organization under the direction of you or your organization when the data is no longer needed for its specified purpose, at your or your organization’s request.
[Basically, we don’t collect any data from students without consent.]
Learning Without Tears does not knowingly collect any information from children under the age of 13 unless you or your organization has obtained appropriate parental consent for that particular student or user to use the Services. Please contact us if you believe we have inadvertently collected personal information of a child under 13 without proper parental consent so that we may delete such data as soon as possible.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at privacy@lwtears.com
7.Changes to Our Privacy Policy
Learning Without Tears may modify or update this Privacy Policy from time to time, so you should review this page periodically. If we change our Privacy Policy in any material manner, we will provide sufficient notice to you or your organization so that you have sufficient time to evaluate our change in practice.