PlantingScience is an online science learning community supporting scientific inquiry and online mentoring. As with any community, we ask, and expect, that members act courteously, respectfully, and appropriately at all times. PlantingScience strives to provide a safe, fun, and private environment for all participants--students, teachers, and scientist mentors--as they engage in online investigations of plant science.

Agreement

Student, Teacher, and Mentor contributions are in the public domain of the World Wide Web. PlantingScience and its participating members/societies assume no responsibility for text, items, or links added to the site by participants. PlantingScience reserves the right to remove any text, items, links, or pages it deems inappropriate without question. PlantingScience reserves the right to restrict access to the site as it deems appropriate.

PlantingScience may, at its discretion, use non-identifiable elements of student research pages, interactions, and assessments for educational purposes designed to enhance our understanding of online interactions and the use of online science mentoring as an educational tool. Student/parental consent will be obtained for the release of identifiable student information used to assess or showcase the program.

Security

PlantingScience is a secure web site. Schools, teachers, students, and scientist mentors must be registered to participate. PlantingScience will work directly with registered teachers and school administrators to ensure student anonymity. PlantingScience will take every effort to ensure online security, but assumes no responsibility for any breaches.

Online Privacy Policy

PlantingScience is committed to complying with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) including recent amendments. Notice of our information practices are explained below as required by the Federal Trade Commission's COPPA. We encourage teachers to discuss their school online policy with their students and to obtain parental consent for online posting of student work. Following COPPA, we require parental consent for all students 13 years old or younger. We provide permission forms to acquire consent. PlantingScience will make a child's information available for review by the child's parent. Any parent wishing to review or have information about their child deleted should email or telephone one of the provided contacts.

Information collected and how it is used

As with all web sites, our system collects information about the registered users and visitors. When calculating statistics on visits and pages viewed, Internet Protocol Addresses are not used to track individuals unless a breach of security requires such an investigation. PlantingScience does not disclose participant information to third parties. PlantingScience does not prohibit the participation based on requiring more personal information than is necessary.

Links to External Sites

PlantingScience inquiry resources may include links to external sites for the convenience of students and teachers. We are not responsible for the content of these sites.

GENERAL DISCLAIMER—Limitation of Liability

The information regarding designing, conducting, or advising experiments provided on PlantingScience.org is provided in good faith, without warranty of any kind. In no event will PlantingScience.org, or any person or entity involved in the online science and inquiry program be liable for any damages, including, without limitation, direct, indirect, or incidental, arising as a result of following advice on this website.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Contact Information

Catrina Adams, Education Director for the Botanical Society of America, Program Director for PlantingScience
psteam@plantingscience.org.