COPPA woes- 13 to use the internet

Post date: 2020-01-22 20:19:55

I'm a teacher of Year 7 (ages 11-14, generally 12-13). There's a character strengths survey we'd like to use, however, this is age restricted, and most of our students are under 13!

The tool we'd like to use is the VIA character strengths survey, and when the curriculum says we do this, most of our kids are under 13. It's awkward when you're rolling through the lesson and you have to make a decision about canning the lesson or getting them to lie about their age, and I'd like to avoid this problem this year.

Purpose: we have to do a 'careers lite' kind of unit, to help the kids think about what kind of person they are and where their interests lie. (Serious career exploration is saved for a more age appropriate time in a few years.) It's a new unit, so open for making improvements.

I am open to finding a new and better survey- the via survey is a bit long.
I am open to setting up adult accounts and having the students use that (VIA has a system where you can take the youth survey through and adult account but the model is more parent/child rather than teacher/student), but I think this means students could see each other's results, which I don't like.

Is it worth rolling our own survey? (Seems like a lot of work with little payoff)

I can't change the unit nor when we do it. (*solemn tone* the government has spoken and so has the school *solemn tone* )

Thank you!

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