Privacy Policy

About the MORE Reading Fun App

The MORE Reading Fun App (App) is an online literacy game designed to help children read, spell, and understand appropriately challenging and conceptually related academic words common in science and history. The App encourages students to laugh and love playing with figurative language using riddles, idioms, puns, metaphors, and similes.

We want children to share figurative language activities with friends, teachers, and family members, to develop flexibility in recognizing that language can be manipulated and help them make sense of difficult words and passages.

This privacy policy describes the information we collect and why we collect it, how this information is used and shared, and your options for managing your personal information.

1. What information do we collect and why?

The App collects information, including personal information that you provide us in two ways. For Students (“Student(s)”, “Child” “User(s)”) who access through the App through a Local Educational Agency (LEA) the App collects personal information when your school or district creates accounts for administrators, teachers, parents and students. For Teachers (“Teachers”), this includes full name, e-mail address, and school. For Parents (“Parent”, “Your” or “You”) we collect parent name and phone number. For Students, this includes first name, grade, and school. “Student Records” may also include additional Student information owned, controlled by the LEA and provided to us in connection with research studies that we conduct at the applicable LEA’s discretion including terciles, dividing students into three bands, of test score performance. To the extent that we receive any of the foregoing as Student Records provided by or on behalf of an LEA, such Student Records shall remain owned and controlled by the LEA. Alternatively, Students may gain access to the App when a when a Parent downloads and uses the App. In this case, in order to generate an account, we need the Student’s first name and the Parent email address and phone number. In both cases this is the minimum amount of Student information to allow for personalized educational experience and facilitate progress monitoring.

The App collects the following:

Information you provide about you and your child. When registering, we collect your email address and cell phone number. We also ask you to provide your child’s first name, which can be made more private if you choose to use a nickname or silly name for your child’s username. Your child may change their username at any time.
Usage information. We may collect or generate certain information automatically from the Student’s use of the App, including login and logout timestamps. We may also collect and generate additional information about Students through their use of the App including information on the game features they interact with including activities accessed, passed, and failed, and whether they enjoy the activities. We also collect device information and resources that you use such as book read alouds and original songs and information derived and reports generated from the foregoing information and the Students’ use of the Software, for utilization by the Students, their Parents / legal guardians, Teachers, and the LEAs.

We use the information we collect to:

Monitor and generate Student Performance Data, and provide students, parents, and the Students’ Teachers or LEAs, with Student Performance Data
Operate, maintain, support, enhance, and provide all the features of our App.
Personalize your experience while using the App, including on various devices you use to access the App. For instance, we may remember your recent activity so we can recommend the most appropriate curriculum and content for you on your next visit.
Communicate with you about your account and account activity (such as your Child’s progress) and to respond to inquiries. We may also send you messages regarding your account, such as account verification, changes or updates to features of the App, or technical or security notices.
Understand and analyze the usage trends, behaviors, and preferences of our Users, to improve the way the App works and looks and develop new features and functionality.
We may also use aggregated or de-identified information about Students, from which we have removed personally identifying information, for educational research, analysis, and similar purposes.

2. Legal Compliance

Our App is compliant with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA) and Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”).

Our App is available for Teachers and LEAs to use as part of the LEA’s educational curriculum. Our App is designed to minimize the personal data collected and used, and we strive to implement best practices to protect the privacy of all our users.

When we receive or access Student personal data and education records from our LEA partners through their use of our products and services, we understand that we are acting in the capacity of a “school official” under FERPA, and are committed to complying with the limitations and requirements imposed on us as an educational service provider to our LEA partner under FERPA and other applicable state student records privacy laws. Student personal data is used only for the purpose of fulfilling our duties and provisioning our products and services under our services agreement with our LEA partner, and is not otherwise used or disclosed except as provided for in the service agreement, as required by law, or as authorized or directed in writing by our school or district partner.

3. Our approach to data security

Protecting your information and data security is extremely important to us. To address this concern, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education Director of Security Operations reviewed and approved the system architecture, internal procedures, and application security. While we do our best to keep your data secure, we cannot guarantee the security of your data. Several factors including, but not limited to, hardware/software failure, outages, human error, attacks, or unauthorized use may compromise the security of our users’ information. In the event that any information under our control is compromised as a result of a breach of security, we will take reasonable steps to investigate the situation and will notify you of the security incident in accordance with applicable laws and regulation.

4. How we share or transfer data to others

We care deeply about the privacy of our users. We do NOT rent or sell your personal information to third parties for their own purposes. We share or disclose your personal information only as needed to provide our service and in the following circumstances:

Vendors and Service Providers. We may share information with our trusted vendors, third party service providers, and individuals to provide services or products for us or on our behalf, which may include hosting, email delivery, and business administration or professional services (e.g., legal advisors, accountants). When we share personal information with third party service providers or vendors, these third parties are contractually obligated to maintain the security and confidentiality of that personal information.
READS Lab and Reach Every Reader project. We may share information with other groups within the READS Research Lab and Reach Every Reader, including any subsidiaries, parent team and its subsidiaries. These groups may use your information as described in this Privacy Policy.
To parents/legal guardians. We may provide Student Records or Student Performance Data to the Students’ Parents / legal guardians.
To Teachers / LEAs. We may provide Student Records and corresponding Student Performance Data to the teachers or other authorized LEA representatives for the applicable Students.
Aggregate or de-identified information. We may share information in aggregated and/or anonymous form that cannot reasonably be used to identify any individual.
Other. We may disclose personal information if we have a good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request; (b) detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues; (c) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of the READS Lab, our users or the public; or (d) as required or permitted by law.

5. How to access, update or delete your personal information

The parent, teacher or administrator can change the child’s username at any time in the App. As a parent, teacher or administrator, you may contact us at any time to update or delete your personal information. Please contact us at readslab@gse.harvard.edu.

We may not be able to delete information in all instances, such as information retained in technical support logs and other business records. We may retain information which has been de-identified or disassociated with personal identifiers such that it can no longer be used to reasonably identify a particular individual.

Unless we receive a deletion request, we will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as is reasonably useful for operational purposes. For example, we may retain certain data as necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse, for recordkeeping or other legitimate business purposes, or if required by law. We may also retain information which has been de-identified or aggregated such that it can no longer reasonably identify a particular individual. All retained personal information will remain subject to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

6. How do we protect Children’s Privacy?

Our App has security measures in place to minimize the risk of loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. The MORE Reading Fun App is intended to be played by children ages 5-11 with the consent of a parent, teacher, or school. We use your information to operate, personalize, maintain, enhance, and provide all the features of our App. We do not use this information for marketing or advertising purposes. The consenting adult can change the child’s username at any time in the App and should contact us at readslab@gse.harvard.edu to permanently delete the child’s information from our systems.

8. International Visitors

Our App is operated and managed on servers located within the United States. If you choose to use our App from the European Union or other regions of the world with laws governing data collection and use that differ from United States law, then you acknowledge that we will transfer your personal information to the United States for the purpose of performing the App according to our contract and for any other purpose for which you provide explicit, informed consent.

9. Links to other sites

The App may link to and may be linked by websites operated by other entities or individuals. Some of these websites, such as www.readslab.org. This Privacy Policy does not apply to, and we cannot always control the activities of, such other third-party websites. You should consult the respective privacy policies of those third-party websites.

10. Changes and updates to this Privacy Policy

We may modify or revise this Privacy Policy from time to time and will notify you of any changes to our Privacy Policy by posting the revised Privacy Policy with an updated date of revision on our website. If we change this Policy in a material manner, we will do our best to notify you of the changes by posting a notice on our website. Your continued use of the App following the effective date of such update constitutes your acceptance of the revised Policy.

11. Contacting READS Lab

Please contact the READS Lab with any questions or comments at readslab@gse.harvard.edu.