Basmati Software, LLC, has a strong committment to education -- the company owner is a teacher in a public high school and knows that the high-cost of software can be prohibitive to school districts on shrinking budgets. To help promote open-source software, we have decided to release our software under the GNU-GPL licensing agreement... the same one used in many Linux distributions.
Why is the service donation-based?
We would rather see teachers use this software to help improve student performance, than not use it because of
prohibitive costs. As a result, we decided to fund this service on a donation-based model, rather than a fixed-cost
model. After we recover our operating costs (including equipment rental, license fees, and salaries), the remainder
of the profit is donated to educational causes. We provide scholarships to students, grants to teachers, and fund
the open-source software initiative with your donations.
How secure is Basmati?
If you use our hosting service, we deploy a technology called "SSL" to encrypt all data between your computer and
our server... the same technology used to secure credit card transactions. In addition, student names are never
transmitted over the web (and rarely stored on our systems). Provided that teachers use non-identifiable student
numbers (e.g. not social security numbers), it is nearly impossible to identify a particular student on our system.
Every effort has gone into making certain Basmati provides secure access to student performance. We constantly
monitor and record activity on our site.
As a teacher, what are my responsibilities?
It is important to understand federal and state legislation related to student privacy. Names are never transmitted
across the internet when you submit your grades to Basmati, but please be careful not to use any other form of
revealing identification (such as social security numbers or phone numbers) for your student ID's. Most gradebook software will
allow you to randomize student IDs. Also be careful about allowing students access to your gradebook -- again, most
allow you to password-protect your gradebook files. You should also be aware of "COPPA" regulations, which limit the
information that web-sites can collect from children under 13 years of age. It is especially important that you do not
use any personally identifiable information (such as social security numbers) with students under 13 or you may be violating federal law.
Finally, you should be aware of "FERPA" regulations... which determine whether or not the parent has the right to
view their student's grades online. It is your responsibility to comply with these and any other state or federal regulations
related to student privacy.