At MySciLife® ("we", "us", "our"), we respect your privacy and care about how your personal information is used and shared. So please be sure to review this privacy policy, as use of MySciLife® (MySciLife®, the MySciLife® Platform, the MySciLife® Service ) located at , and any other MySciLife® services or products shall mean that you are familiar with our privacy practices and policies and that you accept them as outlined herein. The use of information collected through our service shall be limited to the purpose of providing the service for which the Client (most commonly, a school or educational institution) has implemented MySciLife®.
Additionally, your use of MySciLife's services is at all times subject to our Terms of Service, which incorporates this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions or concerns regarding our Terms of Service and or privacy practices, please do not hesitate to contact us via email at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org, or contact us by regular mail at 12355 Sunrise Valley Dr. - Suite 625, Reston, VA 20191 (USA).
The MySciLife® Platform is certified by the kidSAFE Seal Program. The kidSAFE Seal Program is an independent safety certification service and seal-of-approval program designed exclusively for children-friendly websites and technologies, including kid-targeted game sites, educational services, virtual worlds, social networks, mobile apps, tablet devices, and other similar interactive services and technologies. Click on the seal or go to www.kidsafeseal.com for more information.
A Privacy Policy should not be confusing or hard to understand. So here are a few definitions to help when reading this document.
When we say "The Source for Learning" or "SFL," we are referring to ourselves as a company ("Company"). MySciLife® is owned by The Source for Learning, Inc., a Virginia (USA) non-profit corporation.
When we say "MySciLife®", "Platform", "Service", "Services", "Us" and or "We", we are referring to our web-based platform, MySciLife®, which is owned by SFL. Users of MySciLife® services are referred to as "Users" and in order to use MySciLife®, one has to go through a sign up process and join a "community", which is a members-only, digital workspace where users can upload and share content, collaborate and communicate with other users of that community. There are several categories of MySciLife® users ("User Categories"); a "teacher" refers to an instructor employed by an educational institution, a "student" is a pupil in a class, "parent" refers to a parent or guardian of a "student " user, and an "administrator" is anyone who has responsibility for and or control over a community, including but not limited to a teacher, school administrator, principal, club, organization or group leader.
Lastly, the Company may license use of MySciLife® to third parties wishing to utilize the Platform to provide services to its own users. A third party that licenses the MySciLife® platform is referred to as a "Client", and someone who joins that Client's communities is also referred to as a "User".
This Privacy Policy explains how MySciLife® collects and uses information from its users, including our treatment of personally identifiable information. This policy does not apply to websites, services or practices of companies that the Company does not own or control, or to individuals that the Company does not employ or manage, including software, mobile or web apps and or other third-party services.
Throughout the following, reference is made to Verifiable Parental Consent, as referenced in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"), which can be accessed by clicking on this COPPA link. You may also reference this simple one-page informational guide about COPPA from the kidSAFE Seal Program.
If you are under the age of 13, you will be blocked from using MySciLife® until you have provided us or the Client with verifiable written consent from a parent or legal guardian. If you are unsure if your parent or guardian has provided written consent for you to use MySciLife®, please do not use MySciLife® until you have consulted your parent or guardian, and or your teacher or community administrator to confirm that your parent or legal guardian has provided verifiable written consent for you to use MySciLife®.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding obtaining verifiable parental consent, please feel free to contact The Source for Learning, Inc. at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org.
If you are a teacher or community administrator, you must verify that any student, user or member in your studio under the age of 13 has received verifiable parental consent to use MySciLife® before they provide any personal information as is required to sign up for and use MySciLife®.
When we use the term "Personal Information" in this Privacy Policy, we are referring to personally identifiable information of individual, non-children users of the Services. References to "Children's Personal Information" only apply to personally identifiable information of users who have registered for the Services who are under the age of 13. General references to "information" apply to all users.
If you are a student under 13, please do not send any personal information about yourself to us if your school, district, and/or teacher has not obtained prior consent from your parent or guardian, and please do not send any personal information other than what we request from you in connection with signing up to use MySciLife®.
If we learn we have collected personal information from a student under 13 without parental consent being obtained by his or her school, district, and/or teacher, or if we learn a student under 13 has provided us personal information beyond what we request from him or her, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a student under 13 may have provided us personal information in violation of this paragraph, please contact us at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org.
If you are a student or user of MySciLife®, you need to know that when you upload content to your Community, your teacher or Community administrator may be asked to approve or block your content. If your content is approved, it will be shared with the other users of your Community. Remember: anything you post to your MySciLife® account that is approved by your teacher or Community administrator, can be viewed by other users of your same Community. That includes your classmates or other fellow Community users, and may also include anyone else your teacher or the administrator of your MySciLife® Community account has invited to be a member of your Community, which could include without limitation, another teacher, a principal or a school administrator - even your parent(s) and or legal guardian(s). Anything you have posted, or that your teacher or Community administrator has posted, including but without limitations, comments, photos, media, projects and homework, may be viewed by all users of your Community. If you wish to remove any comments, photos, media, projects and homework that may contain personal information, please contact your teacher or Community administrator to do so.
In the future, we may develop features that will allow students, teachers and/or administrators to share content with the greater school, organization or community at large, and possibly even the public. We will update this document before we launch any such features, so please be sure to review this privacy policy from time to time.
Information You Provide to Us
We receive and store any information you enter on the Services, whether via computer, mobile phone, other wireless device, or that you provide to us in any other way. This information may include, without limitation, your name, user name, email address, phone number, school affiliation and location, content uploads and comments, and any other Personal Information or non-Personal Information necessary for us to provide our Services. If you are a child registrant, the only Children's Personal Information we will require is your entire name, an email address, a unique user name, and your birthday, to determine your age.
Information Collected Automatically
We receive and store certain types of usage information whenever you interact with the Services. This information is not Personal Information or Children's Personal Information. For example, MySciLife® automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser including your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data, MySciLife® cookie information, and the page you requested. We do not link this automatically collected data to other Personal or Children's Personal Information we collect about you. We also record details of your activity on the Services, and the number and frequency of visitors to our site and its components.
Technologies such as cookies, beacons, tags and scripts are used by MySciLife and our partners, affiliates, analytics (Google), advertising and marketing services (Google), website tools (reCAPTCHA, jquerytools), payment processors (Braintree), verification/privacy services (kidSAFE) or service providers (Rackspace, Flowplayer, encoding.com). These technologies are used to analyze trends, administer the site, track users' movements around the site, gather demographic information about our user base as a whole, tell us how and when pages in our site are visited and by how many people, and to enable our systems to recognize your computer or device. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis. We do not use cookies to show you behaviorally-targeted advertisements or to track your activities for such purposes.
Third parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on our site use LSOs such as HTML 5 to collect and store information. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML 5 LSOs.
For contact information, or to learn about the privacy practices of the third-parties listed above, click the appropriate link.
Generally
When you use the Services, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, upload files, download files, and transmit information through various channels, depending on the category of user ("User Category") you are registered as, and as permitted by the functionality of the Services and the permissions set by the school administrator. The information we gather from users enables us to personalize and improve our services, and allows users to set up a user account and profile through the Services.
Personal Information
The Personal Information you provide is used for such purposes as responding to your requests for certain information and services, customizing your experience, and communicating with you about the Services.
Children's Personal Information
We use the Children's Personal Information for creating your individual account, which allows us to identify you within your Community, customize your experience, and to send you notifications via the Services from your teacher, school, district, fellow Community members, and from MySciLife® regarding your use of the Services ("Notifications"). Please note that an administrator from your school and/or district can and may view all activity and content associated with your student account, including your Children's Personal Information.
Your email address
If you provide us with your email address, we may send you email communications, including marketing communications. If you are a student under the age of 13, we will only use your email address to send you service and legal notifications. Web beacons may also be used in some of our emails to let us know which emails (and which links within those emails) have been opened by recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of our user communications. To opt out of receiving marketing emails from us, please contact us at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org. Please note that even if you opt out from marketing communications, you may still receive legal or administrative notices from us via email, including updates regarding this Privacy Policy. Such legal notices will still govern your use of the Services, and you are responsible for visiting this Privacy Policy from time to time to review any changes.
Teacher Referrals
If you are a teacher and you provide us with another teacher's name and email address as a referral, we will automatically send that teacher a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the Services. We store this information for the sole purpose of sending this email (and, if applicable, subsequent "reminder" emails) and tracking the success of our referral program. The referred teacher may contact us at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org to request that we remove this information from our database.
Usage Information
The Source for Learning, Inc. gathers data from your use of MySciLife® to enable us to determine how users engage with the Service(s), so that we can make the Services useful, better, more appealing and relevant to as many users as possible, and to customize, refine and improve our Services. As part of our use of information, we may provide aggregate information to our partners (in a non-personally-identifiable format) about how our users use our site. We share this type of statistical data so that our partners also understand how often people use our partners' services and the Services to help provide you with an optimal online experience. We may link usage information to Personal Information and Children's Personal Information (school, location, age, and email address) that we collect through the Services, but we will only use this linked information internally (for example, to customize your experience), and will not disclose it in linked format to third-party partners. Additionally, certain usage-related information may be viewable in your user profile that may be displayed to other users, depending on whether you are a teacher or other Community administrator, or a student or Community member.
Personal Information and Children's Personal Information about our users is an integral part of our business. We neither rent nor sell your Personal Information or Children's Personal Information; we may share your Personal Information and Children's Personal Information in personally identifiable form only as described below. Again, please note that references to "Personal Information" only apply to personal information of individuals who are not children.
Businesses We Do Not Control
In certain situations, businesses or third-party websites we're affiliated with may offer or sell items or provide services to you through the Services, either alone or jointly with us.
We may, for example, work jointly with other businesses to offer or sell products or provide services, or we may work with third-party websites to enhance your online experience. These transactions or services may or may not be commercial in nature. We will share your Personal Information or Children's Personal Information with that business only to the extent that it is related to such transaction or service. Please note that we have no control over the policies and practices of third-party websites as to privacy or anything else, so please review all third-party websites' policies before disclosing any Personal Information or Children's Personal Information or other content on the Services or on any third-party website.
Agents
We employ other companies and people to perform tasks on our behalf and need to share your information with them to provide products or services to you. Examples include sending email, analyzing data, providing user service, and providing user services. Unless we tell you differently, SFL's agents do not have any right to use Personal Information or Children's Personal Information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us.
User Profiles
If your teacher and or Community administrator allows it, you may choose to populate your user profile on the Services with Personal Information or Children's Personal Information, including, without limitation, your name, school affiliation and a brief biography. This user profile information will be displayed to other users to facilitate user interaction within the Services or facilitate interaction with MySciLife®. If you are a student, the only users who may view your profile are those who belong to the Communities or other areas of the platform in which you post content. Your teacher is able to control if your real name is displayed, or your username. However, please keep in mind that information (whether Personal Information or Children's Personal Information) or content that you voluntarily disclose online in your Communities, (to your connections, in comments and or blogs, etc.) becomes available to other users and can be collected and used by others, in accordance with the privacy settings you select in your account preferences, or in accordance with the Community to which you belong. Any media, comments and or other content that you submit to the Services in a manner any other user can view may be redistributed through the Internet and other media channels. For example, if you are a student, the content you contribute to your Communities will be displayed to other users of that Community; however, we cannot control what users of your Community will do with such content after you have disclosed it. Your name may be displayed to other users, depending on your teachers' preferences, when you upload media and or send messages through the Services and other users can contact you through messages and comments.
In some instances you may create multiple identities and obtain your privacy when posting to message boards or other public facing portals. Once you have created an identity you will be able to post and attach items to these "identity profiles". You will be able to switch from one identity to another when using the service without having to log out of the service and then back in. Students under 13 will be able to use these features only if approved by their teachers and only once the teacher has obtained consent.
Once you have created an account you are able to share to the Main Stream of the site with other users of the site. Visitors who are not users of the site, may not see any of your posts. If you do not wish to allow other users of the site to see your posts, you may remove posts at any time by navigating to the "My Posts" screen.
Communication About the Services or in Response to User Requests
As part of the Services, you may receive from MySciLife® email or other types of communication and or messages relating to your use of the Services or your user profile. You acknowledge and agree that by posting information on the Services or otherwise using the Services, SFL and its agents may send you email, contact you or engage in other communication that they determine relate to your profile or use of the Services. If you disclose your email address to SFL, depending on your Community, we may use it to send updates, a newsletter or other news regarding the Services, or to simply send Notifications. If you are a student, SFL only uses your email address to send you Notifications related to your use of MySciLife®. If you no longer wish to receive such communications from SFL, you may opt-out by following the unsubscribe link located at the bottom of each communication or by emailing us at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org. If you no longer wish to receive communications from third parties, please contact that third-party.
Business Transfers
If MySciLife®, or some or all of its assets are acquired or otherwise transferred, or in the unlikely event that The Source for Learning, Inc. goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information may be transferred to or acquired by a third-party. You will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our Web site of any change in ownership or uses of your personal information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personal information.
Protection of MySciLife® and Others
We may release Personal Information or Children's Personal Information when we believe in good faith that release is necessary to comply with the law (such as to comply with a subpoena) or similar legal process; enforce or apply our Terms of Service and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of MySciLife®, The Source for Learning, our employees, our users, or others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request. We will try to give you notice if we release information for these reasons, but please understand that we reserve the right not to, as it may not be practical, legal, or safe to do so.
Client Arrangements
The Source for Learning, Inc. offers its MySciLife® Service both as a stand-alone business presented by SFL and through certain other business arrangements presented under co- branded agreements with Clients, The Client through which you register as a User is referred to as a "Registering Client". SFL may share with each Registering Client all Personal Information or Children's Personal Information concerning a User collected in connection with the MySciLife® Community, such as during registration, inquiries, e-mail messages, and other correspondence to The Source for Learning and aggregate demographic and behavioral information concerning User usage of the MySciLife® Service, which may be used by that Registering Client only in the manner described in this statement. You are not able to opt-out of any such disclosures, and if you do not want such information disclosed to the Registering Client, you should not utilize the MySciLife® Service. In order to ensure the integrity of your Personal Information, all of your data is stored in secure databases of MySciLife® and the Client.
Your MySciLife® account's Personal Information or Children's Personal Information is protected by your account password for your privacy and security. We also use coding practices which take steps to prevent attack on our Services from web browsers and malicious scripts, by processing all actions through several permission verifications checks.
You may help protect against unauthorized access to your account and Personal Information or Children's Personal Information by selecting and protecting your password appropriately and limiting access to your computer and browser by signing off after you have finished accessing your account.
All transmissions to and from the MySciLife® website are encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL).
The Source for Learning, Inc. endeavors to keep your information private; however, we cannot guarantee security. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors may compromise the security of user information. For additional information about the security measures we use in connection with the Services, please contact us at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org.
The Services contain links to other sites, including links shared with students by their teachers, fellow students and other users of the Community. We are not responsible for the content, privacy policies and/or practices of these other sites (but you should read all third parties' privacy policies to ensure you understand them). This Privacy Policy only governs information collected by SFL on the MySciLife® Services.
We allow you to access the following information about yourself for the purpose of viewing, and in certain situations, updating or deleting that information. This list may change as the Services change. You may currently access the following information, if your Community allows you to input any of the following:
If you are unable to update or delete any information on your own and wish to do so, please contact us at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org.
If you are a parent or a legal guardian of a MySciLife® user under the age of 13, and would like to request that Children's Personal Information regarding your child be updated or deleted, or if you'd like to refuse further contact with your child by the Services or request that we stop collecting or using your child's Personal Information, please contact us at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org. A student's participation in our Services, and the ability of a child to access the Services, will not be conditioned on that child providing more Children's Personal Information than is reasonably necessary for that participation or access. We will respond to a request made pursuant to this section within 30 days of our receipt of such request.
Pursuant to Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code, residents of California can obtain certain information about the types of Personal Information that companies with whom they have an established business relationship have shared with third parties for direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year. In particular, the law requires that upon request companies inform consumers about the categories of Personal Information that have been shared with third parties, the names and addresses of those third parties, and examples of the types of services or products marketed by those third parties. To request a copy of the information disclosure provided by SFL pursuant to Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code, modify the User's Personal Information, or to opt-out of having your Personal Information shared with third parties, send your request including your full name, email address, and postal address to: The Source for Learning, Inc. 12355 Sunrise Valley Dr. - Suite 625, Reston, VA 20191 (USA) ATTN: Privacy Officer. Please allow The Source for Learning, Inc. 30 days to respond.
You can always opt not to disclose information, even though it may be needed to take advantage of certain MySciLife® features.
You are able to update or delete any or all information submitted to the MySciLife® Serrvice (as described in the "What information can I access?" section above) at any time. You can also delete your entire account at any time. You may also request deletion of your MySciLife® account by emailing your request to sourceforlearning@sflinc.org with the subject "Account Deletion" and a message including your screen name. Please note that some unrevised information may remain in our records after revision of such information or deletion of your account, or in cached and archived pages. Some information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent that it was copied or stored by other users. We may use any aggregated data derived from or incorporating your Personal Information after you delete your information, but not in a manner that would identify you personally. We will respond to your access request within 30 days.
We will retain your Personal Information or Children's Personal Information for as long as your account is active or as long as needed to provide you the Services; we also may retain and use your information as we deem it necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information to provide you services contact us at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org.
We may update this privacy statement to reflect changes to our information practices. If we make any material changes we will notify you by email (sent to the e-mail address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on this Site prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.
If we make material changes to how we use Personal Information collected from children under age 13, we will notify parents by email in order to obtain verifiable parental consent for the new uses of the child's Personal Information.
The Source for Learning, Inc. collects information under the direction of its Clients, and has no direct relationship with the individuals whose personal data it processes.
If you are a User of a MySciLife® Client and no longer wish to be contacted by that Client, please contact the Client that you interact with directly.
The Source for Learning, Inc. has no direct relationship with the Users of Clients whose personal data it processes. Client Users who seek access, or who seek to correct, amend, or delete inaccurate data should direct their query to their applicable Client (the data controller). If the Client requests The Source for Learning, Inc. to remove the data, we will respond to their request within 30 business days.
SFL will retain personal data we process on behalf of our Clients for as long as needed to provide services to our Client. SFL will retain and use this personal information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.
When you use the Services, you are consenting to have your data transferred to and processed in the United States. All of MySciLife's servers are currently in the United States, and we aren't able to process your information within the borders of any other country. If your use of the Services or disclosure of certain information to MySciLife® would violate any law that is applicable to you, your right to use the Services and/or disclose such information is revoked, as it is wherever use of the Services is prohibited by law (as described in the TERMS OF SERVICE).
Our absolute goal is to protect your privacy, so if you ever have any further questions, concerns or issues about your privacy or the privacy of your child, please do not hesitate to contact us via email at sourceforlearning@sflinc.org, or by mail at 12355 Sunrise Valley Dr. - Suite 625, Reston, VA 20191 (USA), or by phone at 703-860-9200.
Thanks for taking the time to read and understand our Privacy Policy.
Copyright 2020 MySciLife®/The Source for Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Are you sure you want to delete this [entity-type]?