Thank you for visiting NewsHour Classroom, a website published by NewsHour Productions, which is owned by the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association, Inc.

NewsHour Classroom is committed to protecting your privacy and maintaining your trust by adhering to strict privacy policies outlined by PBS and WETA.

The information gathered by the NewsHour Classroom website falls into two categories: (A) information voluntarily supplied by visitors to the website and (B) tracking information routinely gathered as visitors navigate through the site.

A. Voluntarily-Supplied Information:

You may visit the NewsHour Classroom website without voluntarily supplying any personally identifiable information about yourself. The  NewsHour Classroom website not collect any personally identifiable information about you unless you voluntarily provide that information.

To make use of certain features on the NewsHour Classroom website, such as Student Voices, you will need to provide your personally identifiable information. Supplying such information is entirely voluntary. This information will only be used for the purpose described at the time you are asked to provide the information.

NewsHour Classroom is an educator and general audience website and does not knowingly collect or store personally identifiable information about children under the age of 13. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register on this site or provide any information about yourself.

B. Non-personally Identifiable Information

In addition to information that you provide to us, we may also collect and store certain non-personally identifiable information automatically when using the Site.  This information helps us improve the experience you and other visitors have with the Site.

For example, we may collect your IP address, browser information and reference site domain, as well as related information such as the date on which you visit the Site.   This information does not identify you personally and is only used in the aggregate.

As is common practice among web sites, we use “cookies” and similar technologies.  Cookies are text files which store your preferences.  No personal information is ever stored in a NewsHour Classroom cookie, even if you have entered your name or email address on other parts of the Site.

You can generally prevent cookies from being used by changing the settings in your web browser, but please be aware that by doing so you may be unable to fully utilize the Site.

HOW WE USE INFORMATION GATHERED ON THE SITE

Except as expressly set forth in our policies, we will not willfully disclose your personally identifiable information to any third party without first receiving your permission.  We will never sell, rent, or swap your personally identifiable information with non-affiliated third parties for their own purposes.

We will typically explain the extent of use at the time you are asked to provide personal information.  If you do not want this information to be collected or used by us for these purposes, you can simply “opt out.”  Under certain circumstances, opting out may prevent your participation in activities for which personal information is needed, as in contests.

We use non-personally identifiable information, such as IP addresses or demographic information (zip codes for example) to tailor our Site to the interests/locations of our users and to measure traffic within our Site.

We may release personal identification information if we believe in good faith that the law or legal process requires it, we have received a valid administrative request from a law enforcement agency, or such release is necessary to protect anyone’s rights, property or safety.

On certain pages, we may offer visitors the opportunity to provide comments or other user-generated content on blogs and articles.  Any information that you disclose when posting a message to these areas, along with the screen name or ID used, becomes public.  In addition, the information that you disclose in these areas may be used by us for promotional and marketing purposes.  We are not responsible for any personally identifiable information that you choose to disclose in these public areas.

We may use services that tell us which pages you visit and the amount of time between each page visit.  These services do not capture information about you or your computer; it just helps us at PBS monitor Site usage and traffic; for example, it allows us to measure the number of repeat visitors to pbs.org in a given month. This data is only used in the aggregate.

PARTICIPATION IN STUDENT VOICES

When classrooms and after school programs participate in the Student Voice feature, contests or other content opportunities, all participants must have a student release form signed by a parent or legal guardian. Parents or legal guardians may contact us to review that release form and request that NewsHour Classroom stop collecting information and have it deleted. Such requests are subject to NewsHour Classroom verifying to our satisfaction that the requester is in fact the child’s parent or legal guardian.

THIRD-PARTY CONTENT AND EXTERNAL LINKS

If you access third-party services, such as Facebook, Google, or Twitter, through the website to share information about your experience on NewsHour Classroom with your friends and other connections, those third-party services may be able to collect information about you, including information about your activity on NewsHour Classroom, and they may notify your connections about your use of our site, in accordance with their own privacy policies.

You may access third-party content through the site and navigate to third-party sites and services from links on NewsHour Classroom. Whether the third-party content appears within our site (such as in an embedded video player), or you leave our site to view the content on another website, the third party is in control of and independently produces, maintains, and monitors the content and third-party sites.

When you watch third-party content that is made available through the site or navigate to such third-party sites, you become subject to the third party’s terms of use and privacy policies. You should review the privacy policies of these third-party sites for their policies and practices regarding the collection and use of your information as their policies may differ from ours. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of third parties.

PBS NewsHour is committed to ensuring the security of the data provided to us by Site users.  To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy and ensure the appropriate use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic and managerial procedures to protect the information we collect online.

CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

We may revise this Privacy Policy, for example, to reflect changes in the law, our practices, or the features of the NewsHour Classroom website. These changes will be effective immediately upon posting. As a result, you should periodically review the Privacy Policy so that you are up to date on our most current policies and practices. By using NewsHour Classroom, you agree to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy, and, by continuing to use the site after changes have been made, you agree to the changes.

ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY

By using this site, you signify your agreement to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, please do not use this site. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this policy at any time. Please check this page periodically for changes. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.