Privacy Policy

Date Updated: 2023-09-04

At Fondation STaBL Foundation, we highly value privacy and transparency. The following Privacy Policy will cover the personal information we collect, why we collect it, and how we protect it. Additionally, we discuss the ownership of work created using our compilers, and how students can grant us permission to use their work for promotional purposes.

In this document STaBL refers to “Fondation STaBL Foundation”, a federal non-profit corporation registered in Canada.

Personal Information

Account Information

Each student who registers for a class will require an account to access the MOR workspace. Auto generated usernames and passwords will be randomly distributed, granting users access to the code compilers, help center, and other required services. These login credentials will be visible to the students themselves, teachers/parents/guardians (depending on the type of class) and select members of the STaBL Executive Team.

If the user is participating in our programs through their school board, it is up to the teachers to distribute the login information. This can be done through MS Teams, Google Classroom, D2L, or other methods the teacher chooses. In these instances, the distribution and privacy of login credentials by teachers must comply with the school’s policies.

For volunteer mentors, we require their first name and first letter of their last name to create their mentor account on our website. This username, containing the previously mentioned information, will be visible to the participating students and teachers.

While the user is not required to input any of their own personal information during our programs, we do require either the email of their parent/guardian (for individual sign-ups) or of the teacher (through school boards). These emails will be used to communicate scheduling, program details, and other information if necessary.

In terms of teachers and volunteer mentors, we will only ask for their work/student email addresses, which are distributed by the school board, university or other organization. If the teacher wishes to communicate through alternate means or through a personal account, they will have the option to do so.

Collecting and Storing Information

For individual sign-ups: After the user has been registered, the parent/guardian email address is added to our files, along with information regarding the student’s sign up. This information includes their grade, the timestamp, and the camp they signed up for. Guardians should note that we will continue to have access to the original sign-up forms, including all of the responses. Therefore, all of the information they enter upon registration will be collected and kept for future purposes.

For users registered through Outschool, we will not collect and/or store any personal information on our own servers. All entered information will be accessible through Outschool, and is subject to their privacy policy.

Sign-ups through school boards: In this instance, only the teacher and volunteer mentor emails are collected. As an organization, we will not collect or store any personal information regarding the users as part of the sign-up process

The above information will be kept in an Excel file or Microsoft Form on the STaBL Microsoft Onedrive account. With security measures in place such as two-factor authentication, SharePoint Encryption and single sign-on through Active Directory, we have taken adequate measures to ensure that sensitive information is well protected. Only select members of the STaBL Executive Team will have access to these records, and will require a valid reason and password to access them

The collection of emails will be used for communication purposes, as was stated in the previous section. We will contact parents/guardians/teachers/mentors regarding scheduling, details, and progress reports. Once the programs have finished, we will keep the contact information in order to notify these parties of future opportunities that may be of interest. They will have the opportunity to unsubscribe to these emails if they no longer wish to receive updates regarding our camps and programs

To debug problems and tune performance of the server, we may track or collect IP address, operating system, and browser information for specific purposes. This information will be deleted when these technical tasks are complete

External Links

On our website and during our classes, we may link or refer to external websites. These websites have all been verified to be age-appropriate and educational. While not being mandatory to complete activities, these external websites are intended to provide extra support and resources for students who might require them. We have no control over the terms and conditions of these linked sites, as well as their privacy statements. Therefore, we are not responsible for their privacy practices. Please review the associated documentation for each external source, consider installing a child-mode filter on your browser, and check your cookie settings in your web browser.

Using Data to Improve Teaching

When you press the play button, your code is sent to our server where it is compiled into a program, and saved so you can go back to previous versions. We extract statistical data (also called machine learning) to help us teach better, including better training for mentors. For example, we know how often different errors happen, and teach our new mentors how to help with the most common errors.

Legal use of Information

Personal Information may be used to comply with legal obligations and to defend our legal rights. In these instances, Fondation STaBL complies with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Independently Created Content

Any code that the student creates using our workspace belongs to them. They retain ownership and copyright to their work. Teachers and mentors can access their work through the help centre in order to provide assistance and monitor student progress

Students can create and share links to their code in two ways. 1) They can create a view-link, which allows them to share their finished work, including their graphics and games. 2) They can create a forkable link, which not only displays the final product, but the code as well. By sharing this type of link, recipients will be able to use/edit the code.

When creating the share link, users have the option to share with everyone, a group such as their class or team, or an individual. It is our policy that creating a share link also includes a license for the specified user(s) to use the shared work for non-commercial purposes

In particular, if users share their work with mentors and teachers, STaBL may use that work to promote similar activities, to report activities to funders, teachers and educators, in teacher training or academic publications. STaBL will only use work shared using share links, and will not share your personal information. But you have the right to take credit for your work! To tell us you want to be credited, you must create a share link and paste it into the Media Release Permission Form below. As part of the form, you can choose how to be acknowledged, such as “Sunset by Suzy from Saskatoon”. This does not limit how users can claim authorship of their work via email, social media, etc., it only limits how STaBL may use the work.

Media Release Form

Personal Information in Code

We do not have the ability to review code before it is shared by users, so it is important for parents and teachers to reinforce the message that children should never include identifying information in their work on-line. We will reinforce this information during activities with higher risk, for example, we remind them when creating “Herograms” not to include the real address of a friend or relative, although it is ok to include addresses of schools. When we introduce text elements, we remind them not to include full names, e.g., it is ok to address a herogram to “Suzy” but not to “Suzy Smith”.

Changes to Privacy Statement

The contents of this policy are subject to change at the discretion of STaBL. We encourage that users and guardians review this information regularly to ensure their understanding of the application of our policies. We will alert users of any changes to this policy either through our website, email, or other methods we deem fit. Please refer to the “Date Updated” included at the top of this page to view when this policy was last changed.

Access To Information and Contact

Upon request, users may access or challenge the personal information collected and stored by our organization. This can be achieved by contacting the following email address: privacy@stablfoundation.org. Please make sure to include a clear subject line starting with “PRIVACY”.