ATTA student - Advanced Level Technical Test Analyst Updated: 2023

Students at a leading college for barristers were able to access files containing information on hundreds of other current and prospective students, after what the college has described as a technical “issue”.

The Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA), which offers training to future barristers, has informed the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) of a breach that left sensitive college files accessible to students on the college’s web portal.

Computer Weekly understands that some students at the college were able to view files containing private and sensitive information on nearly 800 students, including more than 440 personal email addresses.

The breach left personal data including email addresses and phone numbers, as well as academic information including exam marks and previous institutions attended, accessible to students at the college.

The students were also able to access ID photos along with student ID numbers and sensitive data that included health records, visa status and whether they were pregnant or had children.

The ICCA offers a year-long training course for future barristers based on a mixture of e-learning, in-person teaching and self-study. According to the college’s website, the first half of its two-part course is “delivered entirely online”.

The ICCA’s director of operations, Andy Russell, told Computer Weekly that an unspecified “technical issue” meant “certain students” could access files that should be restricted to staff alone. He said the college sought written undertakings not to share the data further from those who had access to the files.

Rob Shavell is cofounder and CEO of DeleteMe and a vocal proponent of privacy legislation reform.

Doing homework and messaging classmates should not mean sharing data with third parties, including advertisers and law enforcement agencies. But in almost every school classroom today, safety and learning tech solutions imperil children's right to privacy.

Whether through contracting software vendors that can read student emails and can automatically alert police if they see certain keywords, using learning platforms that sell data, or monitoring students through facial recognition or audio, K-12 student privacy must be addressed. A 2022 Human Rights Watch report said that almost 90% of educational technology (EdTech) products it reviewed “appeared to engage in data practices that put children’s rights at risk.”

This is despite protections/restrictions on how data on children can be collected or shared by federal laws like COPPA, FERPA, CIPA and PPRA.

With regulators catching up to this problem and overall awareness of the risks (which range from ransomware attacks that start with student data to discrimination and targeted advertising) rising, schools are in a tough spot. Everyone wants safe schools, but student data needs protection, too.

In this article, I’ll look at the current path of student privacy, the regulations aimed toward increasing students’ rights and the best practices for the EdTech industry when designing educational software.

How Student Privacy Disappeared

Draw a trend line charting schools collecting and using their students’ personal data, and you will notice a steep rise sometime in the early 2010s. This is when we started to see a slew of student safety-focused software programs coming on stream. Tech that promised to solve societal problems through identifying students suffering from depression or anxiety, those claiming to prevent potential suicide risks.

Fed by fears around threats like school shootings (the rate of which doubled between 2010 and 2016) and cyberbullying, the market for increasingly invasive, almost dystopian, monitoring solutions emerged. Examples include the active monitoring of student social media accounts, cameras employing facial recognition technology, the use of AI to filter student emails and chat platforms for "risky" keywords, audio sensors that function as "aggression detectors" (technology initially designed for police to use in high-crime areas), and radiofrequency location tracking embedded in student IDs.

However effective these solutions were (or were not) at protecting students, most did not keep student data safe. Despite signing a K-12 student privacy pledge, EdTech providers have been repeatedly shown to exhibit careless security practices.

By 2019, the privacy problem surrounding student data was receiving more attention, in part thanks to efforts like the Student Privacy Report Card and media publications highlighting the invasiveness of school monitoring tools. It looked like the tide might finally change.

Then, the pandemic happened. From remote-desktop access, which allows the monitoring/recording of student screens, to webcams with “always-on” functionality for remote attendance monitoring, a new wave of tech swept away privacy concerns within schools. Today, we are dealing with the fallout.

How Regulation Is Catching Up

Despite there being 126 state laws covering student data privacy in 2019, The State Student Privacy Report Card report found most of them lacking. No state received an “A” grade for its student data privacy protections.

Since then, student privacy infringement has soared to record-high levels, and regulators are taking a more proactive approach to enforcement. In 2022, the FTC started going after EdTech companies in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). We also saw a permanent injunction and a $6 million civil penalty to EdTch developer Edmodo for collecting the data of students (including those under 13 years old) without notice or parental authorization and allowing third parties to use it for targeted advertising.

Legislation is catching up as well. States are passing or proposing laws to limit what EdTech is allowed to do. For example, Florida passed the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act, which bans EdTech from collecting more data than needed for learning and for using this data for non-educational purposes. Pennsylvania’s Student Data Privacy and Protection Act, which defines student data and creates new protections, was approved by the Senate Education Committee and is headed to the full Senate.

There are also calls for COPPA and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to be updated for 21st-century tech realities. Currently, FERPA protects school-held PII but has an exception that lets schools disclose kids’ PII without parental consent, provided it’s done so for a “legitimate educational interest,” and the school has “direct control” over the provider. Expansion here would be a win for student privacy.

Taking Responsibility For Student Privacy

Solving a problem as big as student privacy has become will take time. The ultimate solution will be a mix of new laws that fix small parts of the problem (like the widely cited Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act), eventual state and federal intervention, and a groundswell of privacy awareness (and vendor discrimination) among schools that use monitoring solutions. It makes sense for an EdTech vendor to get ahead of this trend by practicing the following.

• Collect the absolute minimum amount of student data needed to perform their core function.

• Make it clear to users (students, parents and schools) what data is being collected and why.

• Build revenue models that involve sharing as little of that data with third parties as possible.

Privacy concerns will catch up with EdTech vendors one way or another. Getting ahead of them can be accomplished by making student privacy a priority.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

On Tuesday, Nov. 7, students bustled in and out of Squires Student Center to cast their ballots for Virginia’s general elections for the State Senate and the House of Delegates.

In preparation for the elections, the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences released an article on Oct. 30 of Virginia Tech experts and professors available to discuss the November elections with students. This provided a resource for students as they prepared for the elections.

Under Montgomery County, Virginia Tech students cast a ballot electing a candidate in District 5 of the State Senate and District 41 of the House of Delegates as well as clerk of court, commonwealth’s attorney, sheriff, commissioner of revenue, treasurer, director for the skyline soil and water conservation district and Blacksburg Town Council.

Republican T. Travis Hackworth won against Democrat Robert W. Beckman for the State Senate District 5 and Republican J. Christian "Chris" Obenshain won after a close race against Democrat Lily V. Franklin for the House of Delegates District 41, according to the New York Times.

The overall election results for Virginia saw a Democratic sweep with a majority win for both the State Senate and House of Delegates. The race was close but ultimately Democrats won the Senate 21 to 19 and the House of Delegates 51 to 48. Virginia Democrats succeeded in flipping the House of Delegates from the previous general election in 2021 and maintaining control of the State Senate.

Outside of Squires Student Center, booths and food trucks were stationed encouraging students to vote and guiding them in the process. A couple of booths included Young Democrats, College Republicans, NextGen America as well as students canvassing and urging other students to vote.

Russell Swartz, a senior majoring in political science and president of the Young Democrats, explained that the organization has been encouraging students to register to vote and spread the word about the Democratic ticket with swag for the past six months in preparation for the elections.

Swartz acknowledged that a big obstacle with student voting has been registration, especially in the past having a deadline of Oct. 16.

“The good thing about this year — it’s same day registration, which we’ve seen a lot of people utilize, thanks to Democrats in the legislature,” Swartz said.

Despite hopeful assertions from Swartz, who claimed voters have “blown up last year’s number” and will “triple or quadruple that number,” the voter turnout for Montgomery County was a stagnant 42.9% compared to the previous general election of 2019 with a 41.4% voter turnout.

NextGen America, the nation’s largest youth voting organization, also displayed a booth in front of Squires, handing out stickers to those who had voted and guiding prospective voters through the voting process.

As stated on their website, their mission is to “empower young voters to engage in the political process and ensure our government is responsive to the largest and most diverse generation in American history.”

To combat low voter turnout among students, Virginia State Director of NextGen America Will Winters explained that Virginia has implemented measures such as allowing students with an out-of-state ID to vote where they are attending university.

“Virginia has done a lot to make it easier for students to vote. I think that’s why you saw so many Tech students go vote today,” Winters said.

Winters feels it is important for students to vote because he believes young people are very passionate and voting is the best way for their voices to be heard.

“We want to see students who care so much about voting rights, about an economy that works for everybody, about fighting climate change, about protecting LGBT rights, all these different issues,” Winters said. “This is a way to bring it home to bring it local.”

Lilly Roser and Madison Fusco, both freshmen majoring in political science, stood outside Newman Library encouraging students to vote by handing out sample ballots and providing information about the voting process.

Both Roser and Madison emphasized the importance of voting, as it's a civic responsibility.

“I think it’s a rite of passage that we have and we should exercise our freedom,” Madison said.

Roser agreed, adding that “it affects us, this being a local election. These candidates, it’s not just a president, these can directly affect our area, our school.”

While the voter turnout did not drastically increase from past elections, a large number of students still participated in the elections and exercised their right to vote, speaking their voices for the benefit of the local community.

Technicians: often overlooked, yet the very foundation of the entertainment industry. How does this sentiment apply in a high school theatre program?

I am currently working as a technician for my school’s fall play, Suite Surrender by Michael McKeever, which opens this Thursday, November 2nd. I’ve adored every second of the process for this show, where I’ve been serving as costume manager and head of wardrobe. I have found those terms to be the best way to explain to people who may not be familiar with the theatre community, or my school’s program in particular, what exactly it is that I do for this show. I am not the costume designer, and my creative input is minuscule, but I simply oversee all other costume-related elements that are not the designs themselves. I oversee fittings, adjustments, organization, taking notes, tweaking pieces that are not working from a functionality standpoint, among miscellaneous other tasks. I also lead a team of crew members, both on costume and wardrobe crew separately. In my program, the costume crew oversees all costume matters prior to dress rehearsals, when the wardrobe crew takes over and serves as dressers and general assistants. I observed a similar experience with the handling of costumes in my experience at the collegiate level, but lack a total understanding of how costumes work in more professional spaces. 

Greenville Tech student about to graduate, thanks school for support

Updated: 9:17 AM EDT Oct 20, 2023

TECHNICAL COLLEGE GRADUATES WALK ACROSS THE STAGE IN DECEMBER. IT WILL BE ESPECIALLY EMOTIONAL ALL JOURNEY FOR ONE GRADUATE WHO IS IN HIS 50S AS GABRIELLE KOMOROWSKI SHOWS US, HE SAYS HE COULD NOT HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF SUPPORT FROM THE SCHOOL AROUND HIS NECK. JAMES SCOTT ODOM JUNIOR WEARS A REMINDER OF HIS FAMILY. HE SAYS, THANK YOU FOR ALWAYS BEING THERE FOR FOR ME AND HIS FAITH, HE SAYS THEY HAVE GUIDED HIM ON HIS JOURNEY FROM SICKNESS TO SUCCESS. COLLEGE STUDENT AND SOON TO BE COLLEGE GRADUATE. THIS IS A MOMENT A PIVOTAL MOMENT IN MY LIFE, HE SAYS. OVER SEVEN YEARS, HE’S DEALT WITH HEALTH ISSUES, INCLUDING LUNG SURGERY. BUT HE STAYED FOCUSED AND ENROLLED IN GREENVILLE TECHNICAL COLLEGE. AND I KNEW THAT I HAD A LOT OF CHALLENGES AHEAD OF ME. HE RECEIVED SUPPORT FROM STUDENT DISABILITY SERVICES. THEY NURTURED ME WITH MY FIRST CLASS, JUST MAKING SURE I’M GETTING THE HANG OF STUFF I COULDN’T EVEN OPEN THE COMPUTER, HE JOINED THE AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE SCHOLARS INITIATIVE, GIVING HIM A SENSE OF COMMUNITY, AND JAMES RECEIVED SCHOLARSHIPS THANKS TO THE GREENVILLE TECH FOUNDATION. WE PROVIDED ASSISTANCE IN SCHOLARSHIPS. OVER 500 STUDENTS FOR THIS ACADEMIC YEAR. AND WRIGHT, THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADVANCEMENT, SAYS THIS YEAR THE GREENVILLE TECH FOUNDATION CELEBRATES 50 YEARS OF SUPPORTING STUDENTS. MORE THAN HALF OF THE COLLEGE’S STUDENTS ARE NOT RIGHT OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL. MANY OF THEM HAVE BEEN IN THE MILITARY OR THEY HAVE BEEN WORKED DOING. AND THEY SEE THAT THEY NEED TO GET A BETTER EDUCATION. TODAY, MY HEALTH IS GREAT THANKS TO THIS SUPPORT, JAMES WILL SOON COMPLETE HIS DEGREE IN MANAGEMENT AND PLANS TO WALK ACROSS THE GRADUATION STAGE IN DECEMBER. SUPPORT HERE LEADS TO SUCCESS HERE AT HOME SO EVERYONE WINS. THE EMPLOYERS WIN. CERTAINLY THE COMMUNITY WINS. BUT THE INDIVIDUAL STILL WINS BECAUSE THEY’RE COMING OUT WITH A HIGH QUALITY EDUCATION AND THEY’RE COMING OUT WITH VERY LITTLE DEBT, IF ANY, IN GREENVILLE. GABRIEL KOMOROWSKI, WYFF NEWS FOUR JAMES, CONGRATULATIONS AND CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THE GRADUATES THIS SEMESTER. AND YOU’RE INVITED TO MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO HELP CELEBRATE THE GREENVIL

Greenville Tech student about to graduate, thanks school for support

Updated: 9:17 AM EDT Oct 20, 2023

When Greenville Technical College graduates walk across the stage in Greenville, South Carolina, in December, it will be an especially emotional journey for 59-year-old James Scott Odom Junior. He said he could not have done it without a tremendous amount of support from the Greenville Tech Foundation. Watch the interview with WYFF News 4's Gabrielle Komorowski in the story above. The Greenville Tech Foundation supports students through scholarships, emergency assistance and innovative programs. It celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and is asking people to make a contribution to help celebrate. You can learn more here.

GREENVILLE, S.C. —

When Greenville Technical College graduates walk across the stage in Greenville, South Carolina, in December, it will be an especially emotional journey for 59-year-old James Scott Odom Junior. He said he could not have done it without a tremendous amount of support from the Greenville Tech Foundation. Watch the interview with WYFF News 4's Gabrielle Komorowski in the story above.

The Greenville Tech Foundation supports students through scholarships, emergency assistance and innovative programs. It celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and is asking people to make a contribution to help celebrate. You can learn more here.

On Thursday, Nov. 2 a group of Texas Tech students came together at the free speech area of campus to protest for Palestinians. On their signs were written words like “ceasefire for the children” and the protestors chanted phrases like “Free, free Palestine” as they walked around campus. The protestors were asking for peace and for people to educate themselves on the events currently occurring as well as the history of Palestine.

Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up Initiative for the 2022-2023 academic year obtained opinions from more than 50,000 students, teachers, administrators and parents across the nation. The Oct. 26 report is the latest installment of a larger and continuing body of research dating back 20 years in which 6.2 million voices have been documented so far.

The executive summary for the survey work in 2022-2023, which focuses on the use of technology in schools, notes:

• When assigned to write a report or paper, less than half of students in grades 8 and under said their first step would be to use the Internet and online tools to gather information, compared to 62 percent of high school students. Fourteen percent in the younger student group said their first step would be to look for a book in the school library, compared to just 1 percent of high schoolers.
  
• Seventy-nine percent of teachers for grades 6-8 and 67 percent for 9-12 said they use a digital learning management system (LMS) weekly, but less than 25 percent of teachers for all of those grades indicated that they conduct a weekly virtual lab or online experiment.
  
• Less than 15 percent of teachers for grades 6-12 used digital tools to create media for their students on a weekly basis.
  
• Educators overwhelmingly indicated a need for more organized professional development opportunities. When asked how they learn about new technologies for their classrooms, 77 percent said they learn by asking other teachers, and 64 percent said they learn on their own.
  
• Ninety-six percent of parents said the effective use of classroom technology is important for their child’s future, and 53 percent of parents said their main concern is that their child is not learning the right skills in school to be successful.
  
• Only 12 percent of school administrators said their teachers are proficient enough with data to learn and understand the needs of individual students.
  

In a public statement, Project Tomorrow CEO Julie Evans expressed hope that schools and districts will consult students as the focus on classroom technology and future-ready skills continues.

“Throughout these shifts, it’s crucial we elevate students’ voices and work hand-in-hand with them to better support learning together,” she said.

“Students are using technology to extend their learning, and in fact, they have their own vision for effective learning,” Evans says in the video. “And of course, the question is, are we listening?”

Students monitor the spacecraft while it orbits the Earth and moon and even check it's health every day.

In August 2021, Texas Tech University opened the School of Veterinary Medicine in Amarillo, answering the call to provide veterinary medicine in rural and regional communities. Just a few months later, the university stepped up to consider another call – a collaborative solution to human, animal, and ecological challenges.

The answer to this call is the Ph.D. in One Health Sciences, the first such Ph.D. in the U.S.

One Health, the term to describe this three-pronged interdisciplinary approach, may be relatively new, but the concept is not. Throughout the last century, physicians and scientists from across the globe have sought to identify the links between human and animal medicine. In fact, the establishment of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the 1890s was heavily influenced by a veterinary pathologist. By the late 2000s, and due in large part to an avian influenza pandemic, international health and governmental organizations added a third component – ecosystem understanding – to develop a multi-faceted strategy for stopping the spread of infectious diseases.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 60% of known infectious diseases in humans can spread from animals to humans, and 75% of novel or emerging diseases originate within animal populations. Based on these statistics, School of Veterinary Medicine Dean Guy Loneragan says, “The need for One Health thinking to respond to infectious disease emergencies is clear.”

As the school’s impetus for launching the premier One Health doctoral program in the nation, Loneragan, who prefers to go by Guy, has spent the last two decades studying how animal, human and ecosystem health are interconnected.

“The sort of ‘Aha’ moment happened while pursuing graduate training at Colorado State University,” Guy shared. “I had learned about zoonoses but then heard a professor talk about how his family was affected [by an E. coli outbreak] one time. At that time, my world view of my role as a veterinarian opened up and the importance of public health and then One Health became clearer. In time, I would come to see that broader world view as providing an opportunity to identify more creative solutions to a problem.”

In his current work, Guy is interested in the mechanisms by which salmonella moves within and between animals.

“We know of salmonella in terms of making us sick, but there are lots of types of salmonella that don’t seem to make people or animals sick,” he said. “There is so much more to uncover, and it lends itself to a One Health investigation.”

When the Ph.D. in One Health Sciences program set out in August 2022, the 28 students in the inaugural class represented the largest Ph.D. program launch in Texas Tech history. Among those students is SaraBeth Boggan. SaraBeth doesn’t remember a time when she wasn’t aware of the One Health concept.

Growing up, she wanted to be a veterinarian and in college chose to study wildlife science. Ultimately, parasites and disease ecology drew SaraBeth’s interest.

“We discuss a lot about why human movement or urban development impacts animals or how animal behavior and population changes could and should impact management strategies, but wrapping up how it’s all connected and how they impact each other through disease transmission and management decisions, that’s my thing,” SaraBeth said.

SaraBeth’s specific research is on the raccoon roundworm, a zoonotic parasite – meaning people can get it from animals – that has some rather serious human health concerns.

“We are currently evaluating the infection prevalence of raccoons in the Panhandle and West Texas and will then move into evaluating infection in adult humans,” SaraBeth said.

Inaugural One Health Ph.D. student Tomas Lugo is making inroads to address another societal problem – drug efficacy and chemical impact in cancer treatment. Tomas’ project involves creating models that resemble living organisms, like cancerous tumors, and testing environmental factors in relationship to cancer.

“Throughout my career, working in either animal or human health, I was siloed in my department, looking at very specific programs,” Tomas said. “This program allowed me to venture outward and connect the gaps between different departments, helping to solve the bigger picture of animal, human and environmental health.”

Another Ph.D. student, Bailey Samper, believes that One Health solutions can be found in the numbers. As a master’s student, Bailey noticed most of her work had been strictly confined to agricultural business and economics. While she loved economics, she recognized she also had an interest in animal health and food animal supply chains.

“Food animal supply chains foster multiple pathways of One Health challenges, such as protein availability, food security, zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance,” Bailey explained. “The opportunity to employ economic reasoning to tackle such challenges prompted my interest into this field.”

Following graduation, Bailey plans to use her Ph.D. to pursue a research position in academia or government.

As of the fall of 2023, the Ph.D. in One Health Sciences program includes 31 students from 15 countries. Bringing a local perspective from their corners of the world, these students are stretching Texas Tech’s impact and developing strategies to solve societal challenges all over the globe. From global, to regional, to local, One Health discovery is happening right here at Texas Tech.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Texas Tech students work to find links in societal challenges