What do I do about GDPR if I have a teacher blog?

Lots of teachers have blogs today where they share some of their classroom practice. With the new rules around GDPR coming up shortly, like all websites, they will have to ensure that they are compliant. I am not an expert in this area so this guide is merely a starting point to get you going.

Ultimately, what you need to do depends on what information you keep about people that interact with your blog or website. If you are simply charting what you are doing in your classroom and you aren’t showing images of children in your class, you will probably only need to add a note to say your website stores Cookies. I have written an article about how to do this here.

However, if you have included images of pupils or other people in your blog, you will have to publish how you will allow them the right to be removed from your website. You will also have to get permission for these images to continue to be uploaded to your blog.

Things get even trickier if you collect email addresses from your readers, for example, if you offer a newsletter. In line with GDPR, you are going to have to ask all of your users whether you can continue to email them and if they don’t opt in, you will have to delete their details. One of our websites, Mash.ie had a list of over 15,000 users. After May 25th, they couldn’t be used and were deleted. An exception to this is if you made it clear from the very beginning what you were collecting the email addresses for. In this case, you probably should be ok but you will again need to be sure that users can edit their information and be able to unsubscribe from your newsletter.

If you run a teacher shop on your site, things go up another level because you will have loads of information on users. If you are in this situation, I’d advice getting some professional advice as this can be quite complicated. Ultimately, it falls under these categories:

  • collect no more data than is necessary from an individual for the purpose for which it will be used;
  • obtain personal data fairly from the individual by giving them notice of the collection and its specific purpose;
  • retain the data for no longer than is necessary for that specified purpose;
  • to keep data safe and secure; and
  • provide an individual with a copy of his or her personal data if they request it.  (source: GDPR and You)

GDPR may be a small job to get right for most teacher bloggers but as your blog gets more complex, it can be a real headache. I hope this guide gets you started. The best of luck.

Last Update: May 16, 2018  

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