FERPA stands for Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 and is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. It restricts others from accessing or discussing your educational records without your consent. In this class we are asking you to sign a waiver and this page explains why.
In this class you will be asked to post some of your project responses to this site and to sites like Open Processing. This means that your work will be able to be viewed online. FERPA is an act that protects your privacy in this regard.
However, we are asking for you to sign a waiver for FERPA for this class so that you can post your work here. Being and artist or creative, particularly one that is working with networked and digital technologies, means engaging with a vibrant and active community online. It means learning to discuss, respond and interact with your peers and community. This is not possible in most courseware platforms (eg. Blackboard etc.).
You might be worried of posting poor quality or beginners work, however the fate of mediocre work online is that it is ignored. The opportunity presented by posting in this way however is that if your work is picked up by a blog or shared on social media, it is possible to connect with a wider audience than just your classmates.
It is fine to work anonymously. You might be worried about harassment or stalking. If you click on the profile tab in the wordpress dashboard you can change your first and last name to be whatever you wish to go by, eg. your initials.