Teacher sharing

But how much of a teacher's daily practice, the meaningfully specific detail required for growth-inducing reflection, is protected intellectual property?

The Team Drive where I'm supposed to share curricular material auto-shares the material with every HS employee, including several who are no longer employed by the school and whose Google Drive access is... I assume... suspended. But if I put a document in that folder, I don't have the ability to UNSHARE below that level. I can share with specific Classroom groups, or I can make it Domain wide, or I can make it "with link."

I share documents from my school Google account with other teachers on the CS Discord. My ADD wants single versions, I know I will lose track of derivatives and forks. I share that material because I want to improve those documents, the ones I'm using with my students right now. Sharing my real practice means some level of exposure for the real place where I am working and living.

This is set against the background that all of our schools are desperate for me to generate tons of structured text in platforms like Rubicon Atlas or ManageBac in order to "document" my learning objectives and teaching materials.

All of those forms are bottomless wells, SQL Sarlac Pits that will slowly digest teacher labor for 1000 years with no observable results or feedback.

It is considered meta-cognitively important for teachers to frame and process our lessons into 3NF data, but sharing material with colleagues outside school ... that's risky.

That's something you should be careful about.

You should be careful what you work on with the school computer, because maybe the school copied part of its contract from some SV boilerplate and they're asserting company ownership of intellectual property.

Maybe you teach in Europe, and you're screening all services through much stricter GDPR and Personal Info filters.

Then you should talk to your union rep.

Before you ask a remote colleague for calibrating feedback on student work, you should have a really careful conversation with your department chair.

The thought is always how this could "expose" something or someone. Any extra link between our schools causal domain and the external world is first and foremost a new attack surface, something that generates new vulnerabilities.

Any structure, any administrator or local principality I could turn to for advice is only going to be looking for maximal local downside risk.

Instead of feeling like I have guidance for navigating these complex legal waters under shifting tides, everyone I would think to ask for guidance (admin, reps, dept chairs) is 80% likely to respond "just don't swim there."

It was swimming these spaces that's launched every Maker program, every speaking event, every fellowship and book deal.

But once I'm hired at a given school, I switch into a different actuarial category. Collaborative and discursive spaces, like the snap! forums and many other enduring pockets of the old internet can be magic, but no one's clear on where the "representative of the school" line is drawn. That ambiguity¹ means you're never just acting in accordance with a rule or following a coherent principle. You're creeping along the edge, avoiding the real observable dangers and worrying over a schools' FutureCrime "Someone might become upset by this" response system.

I understand there is a complex landscape of intellectual property and privacy protections.

I know there are real compliance burdens.

But I don't think our answer can just be don't do it.

As it stands, I'm unsure of how to grow and develop as a professional without potentially exposing ourselves my schools to risk.

Or, more precisely, without creating situations where a school might decide that employing me is a risk they're unwilling to bear.