Privacy Policy

This privacy policy discloses the privacy practices for The Physics Classroom website (https://www.physicsclassroom.com). This privacy notice applies solely to information collected by this website. It will notify you of the following:

1. What personally identifiable information is collected from you through the website, how it is used and with whom it may be shared.
2. Why we occasionally ask for a student name or other information.
3. Information about our Ad displays.
4. How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

 

About Our Company
We, The Physics Classroom, LLC, are the sole owners and decision-makers regarding the policies of this website and the personal information that it requests and collects.  To fully understand our privacy policy, we believe it is useful to understand our company - The Physics Classroom, LLC.   We exist to serve students, teachers, and classrooms in all that we do. We were developed by teachers with the goal of providing the best resources we can provide that fosters deep learning and high-quality instruction. As teachers, we have students' privacy in mind. The resources on our website always emerge out of an awareness of the need to protect such privacy needs and interests. 
 
 

Information Collection, Use, Storage and Sharing 

Part 1: Task Tracker Accounts
The Physics Classroom uses a custom-built Task Tracker program. The program is used by teachers and their classrooms to make assignments based found in four sections of our website: Concept Builders, Minds On Physics, The Calculator Pad, and the Physics Interactives (with Concept Checkers). Student accounts require three items of personal information - email address, first name, and last name. The email address is used as a username and allows students to perform a password reset when necessary. Because password resets can also be performed by teachers for students in their class, a "real email address" is not essential. To reduce or avoid altogether providing such identifying information, a student could enter a made up address such as [email protected] and rely upon their teacher for password resets.
 
Task Tracker accounts also require a first name and a last name as the final two pieces of identifying information. This information serves the function of helping teachers track the progress of their students on assignments and associating completion date with the name of the actual student in order to facilitate score entry into a gradebook program. Once more, to reduce the amount of identifying information teachers and schools could decide to use first name and last initial (e.g., Scott L) or even first two letters of first name and last two letters of last name (e.g. Sc Le)  or some variant that allows teachers to still accomplish what they need to accomplish while protecting student identity (e.g. Student 001).
 
Information that we provide students (and their teachers) regarding the set-up of their accounts explains the importance of privacy considerations during account creation. Students are encouraged to follow their teachers directions regarding the information entered for the email address, first name, and last name. Alternatives to using an email address, a first name, and a last name are explained. This information includes a short video walk-through and a distributable PDF. 
 
All that being said, we pledge to use best practices associated with the storage and delivery of student data that is provided to us. Such best practices include but are not limited to safeguards such as encryption, firewalls, and password protection.  Data is encrypted both when at rest and in transit. Our website is hosted on its own server (not a shared server) by a reputable hosting company. Employees of the company are regularly trained and assessed for their understanding of security and lawful privacy practices. The hosting company maintains a regular security patch and maintenance schedule to insure that our server always has the latest security updates.  

Task Tracker accounts store student progress information for assigned tasks, including student scores, and the time and date of completion (if completed). This information is viewable by the student and by the teacher when logged into their password-protected account.  A score is also associated with the assigned task that is calculated from student completion information and the teacher's formula for computing a score. We will permanently delete all student  data within 30 days of the end of the subscription (or earlier if the teacher indicates so in the account settings for a class). All subscriptions end on July 31. Teachers will be allowed to export the data as needed during the time frame when the subscription ends to when the data is permanently deleted. 
 
As of this writing, Task Tracker accounts are used with four sections of our website: Concept Builders, Minds On Physics, The Calculator Pad, Physics Interactives (with Concept Checkers), and the Science Reasoning Center. All other sections of our website operate independent of Task Tracker and users can expect to never provide or to view personally identifying information in those other sections.

 
 
Part 2:  Information We do Not Collect
To be completely clear and transparent, the following information is not collected and the following practices are avoided with regards to student data and their privacy rights.

• We do not collect geolocation data.
• We do not collect biometric or health data.
• We do not collect behavioral data.
• We do not collect data regarding special education needs or accommodations.
• We do not collect address information or phone number or birth date information.
• There is nowhere on our website where students can interact socially with one another and post and store messages sent from one account to another. As such, abuse and bullying is a non-issue on our website.
• There is nowhere on our website where students create data or upload data to our servers. 
• There is nowhere within the Task Tracker system (or anywhere else on our website) where students can store written information. Student-created content does not exist on our website. The only information that is stored by Task Tracker is information related to the correctness of answers, the completeness of assignments, and student scores. This. information is stored automatically by our program at the time a question is answered or a task is completed.
• We do not market, sell, or otherwise distribute the email addresses and name information that is provided to us. The information we collect is used solely to support students and teachers of the Task Tracker program. We do not exist to make a profit on this information nor would we ever consider or be tempted by such an opportunity. (Refer to About Our Company earlier in this document.)
• We do not share student progress information with third parties for any reason. Such information is not shared for educational research or for any other reason. Student progress information remains confidential to the student and the teacher.

 
 
 
Part 3: Children Under the Age of 13 and Parental Control
Users of our website, and particularly of the Task Tracker program, are typically students in high school or college. As such, it is highly unusual that a student under the age of 13 years would have a Task Tracker account. Functional accounts can only be created for classes offered by subscribed teachers and used for school purposes.  Nonetheless, if by some odd circumstance a child under the age of 13 years is using the Task Tracker system for school purposes, we are willing to work with parents and the child's teacher to eliminate the storage and transmission of all identifying information for that student.  We do ask that the topic of parent review or control of student data be initiated through the child's teacher. This allows us to confirm the identify of the parent and it keeps all parties in the loop regarding the interests of the parents. Upon their request, the identifying information will be deleted and the teacher will use an alternative, non-identifying code name as needed (or we can simply permanently delete the account altogether).
 


Part 4: Data Security and Access
Student data is stored on a dedicated server using industry-standard security practices. Such practices help to ensure that unauthorized individuals do not gain access to students' identifying information. Information provided by students at log in is encrypted before being sent to our servers. Upon log in, a signed token is stored on the user's device based as a result of user authentication with our servers. When the user logs out or the session otherwise ends, this security token is removed from local storage.
 


Part 5: Data Breaches
If we become aware of a data breach, we will expediently investigate the situation to determine which schools and which students have been affected. As soon as the information is confirmed, we will reach out to administrators at the school to notify them of the breach,  the accounts that have been affected, and a description of what we are doing about it. We will follow up in due time with a full report describing known details and any security adjustments that have been made to prevent future breaches.
 


Part 6: Data Collection on our Website as a Whole
As of this writing, Task Tracker is the system that collects students' identifying information and used to store progress information on tasks in four sections of our website: Concept Builders, Minds On Physics, The Calculator Pad, and the Physics Interactives (with Concept Checkers). Task tracker and student data is never collected or used in any other section of our website. Students, parents, teachers and schools can be confident that all other sections of the website are void of any type of reliance upon students' identifying information.


Part 7: Information Practices
The personal information Physics Classroom intends to collect from the child, should the parent provide consent, are:  First name last name, email address.  There may be multiple online communications to the child via their email address, as a normal function of the Physics Classroom.  The Physics Classroom does not make personal information publicly available, and it is only used for account creation, email communication, and teacher(s) and school faculty see the personal information.  Should the parent wish to review or have deleted the child’s personal information, and refuse to permit further collection or use of the child’s information, please use the below privacy form. Inquiries from parents concerning the Physics Classroom privacy policies and use of children's information can be made through the Contact Form (General Inquiry) or by using the Privacy Form.

 

Ad Displays and Ad-Free Access 

The Physics Classroom is proud to be able to offer a free website with low-cost premium features. While our website is free to the end user, the  fact is that the operations of producing website content and managing it are quite costly. To cover such costs, The Physics Classroom displays ads on the perimeter of most of its pages in order to earn revenue from advertisers. The ads are part of the Google AdSense program and the FreeStar ad network. We make no individual decisions regarding what ads display on a particular page for a particular visitor. Nor do we know which ads show on a particular users screen. All such decisions are governed by Google and FreeStar. Personally-identifying information provided to us by schools is not used to support the operation of our ad displays. The information given to us by schools is never distributed, sold, or given to any other person or party. It is only used for educational purposes - to support the use of our Task Tracker program.
 
We have a limited amount of control over which ads or what type of companies can display ads upon our website. We do exercise the limited controls that we do have in an effort to prevent ads with objectionable content from displaying. There are entire categories of ads which should never appear on our screen because we have disabled such categories. For instance, advertisements for alcohol, tobacco products, lingerie, gambling, etc. should never appear on our pages since we have disabled these categories. We are also able to block ads that link to particular websites that might be considered objectionable and we do exercise such abilities to block ads. When we hear from teachers or parents about an objectionable ad, we work with our account manager to locate the ads and block them. Providing us with screenshots or photos is the best means of faciliting removal of such objectionable ad content. We pass this information on to the account manager and exedient action is takent to prevent the reoccurrence.
 
It is important that users of our website do recognize the importance of the ad program to our ongoing operations. It is one of our main sources of revenue and without it we would never be able to support the work of programmers and content providers nor pay for services, content management systems, and other costs incurred on an annual basis. The revenue earned from the display of ads allows us to provide a FREE website that serves many millions of students, teachers, and classrooms every year. While the above practices do not guarantee the display of unobjectionable ad content, we pledge to be vigilant about the ad content that displays on our website in order to keep all content appropriate. We are always appreciative of reports from parents and teachers to help us remain faithful to this pledge.

Ad-Free Access: We are aware that many users of our website simply do not like ads and might even detest them. In July of 2022, we introduced an ad-free option to accommodate such website visitors. For a small annual charge, a website visitor with an ad-free account can log in and view all pages ad-free. We offer ad-free accounts to schools who use Task Tracker at the additional cost of $2/student. The ad-free access will be available during the subscription season. We will also offer ad-free access to any individual at the cost of $3/person/year. Individuals can purchase their ad-free accounts here. Ad-free subscriptions for schools (with or without Task Tracker acccounts) can be purchased here.
 
California Residents: We have opted in to AdSense's program for compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which provides California residents the option of viewing only non-personal ads (also known as contextual ads). When not selected by such website visitors, ads shown on the screen will be personalized or targeted ads based on user interests as determined by Google. Like most Ad servers, the AdSense program uses third-party cookies on websites to determine visitor interests and browsing habits; the information contained in these cookies is a multi-character cryptic code that is unique to the device being used. There is no personally identifying information contained in the cookie. AdSense and similar ad networks gather this information to deliver ads on a page that are customized to the user's interests. Users who are not comfortable with advertiser's collection of such information should know that they have the right and the ability to opt out of viewing personalized ads, viewing ads altogether, or even having third-party cookies collect such information. 
 
To learn more about Google AdSense and their use of third-party cookies and personalized ads on websites, visit https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads.
 
Visitors who would like to opt out of the showing of ads can do so by visiting Google's Ad Settings page (https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated) or by visiting the by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page (http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp).
 
 

Contacting The Physics Classroom

If you feel that we are not abiding by this privacy policy, if you wish to review or remove yours or your child's information, or if you have any other privacy concerns, please use the form below and we will contact you as soon as possible.
 

 

Updated: 7/1/2024