Japanese Moodle

Dear Sergio

The important points are
1) You should specify a "site policy" which is really a privacy and data use policy.
From outside of Japan
http://www.wmata.com/about/datause.cfm
http://www.myomnipod.com/privacy
http://www.siemens.com/index.jsp?sdc_p=csuo1066434dpnflm&
http://nokia-asia.com/nokia/0,8764,33008,00.html
From inside Japan
http://www.quantum.co.jp/notice/privacy.htm
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/privacy/index.htm
http://www.thk.co.jp/en/privacy_en.html
http://www.jal.co.jp/en/footer/security.html
Which mentions, that you have a data protection and privacy policy and management systems in place, what data you will require, what you will use the data for, who will see the data, and who is in charge of the data, and a method of contact, for students to approve before entering the site.

2) Unless you have cleared the disclosure of data to students, then all data (the profile pages, who is online, grades, photos) should not be available to students about other students but it should be available to the students themselves.

Rather than risk students refusing to agree to the privacy and data use policy, I have suggested a few tweaks for making the above data visible only to teachers and the person to whom the data belongs to. And since I have about 500 students on my moodle and do not want the hassle, I reduce the amount of information that students are requested to put into the profile in the first place, and change its nature (from country to academic department, town to student number)

I will also work on 'anonymous forums' when I get the chance.

Timothy