You put a lot of thought into how to "get [your] products into schools," and you thought
Facebook was the right platform to work with?
If you're just using Facebook as a quick marketing plug to get folks interested in your service, that's one thing. Otherwise, you might want to talk to a lawyer and get them to explain FERPA to you, and check your business for compliance.
I work in IT at a small college, and at least as far as we've been told, no college can allow enrollment records to become visible to anyone not enrolled in or teaching a class. That means that even displaying the current course load for a student is considered a privacy breech for which the college is liable.
Of course, there's also the fact that purchasing decisions at most schools are made on 6-10 year schedules. No responsible administrator is going to gamble on putting key academic resources into a system as new and unproven as Facebook. FB (and the whole FB app ecosystem) have a long way to go to convince anyone that they're in it for the long haul.
If you're just using Facebook as a quick marketing plug to get folks interested in your service, that's one thing. Otherwise, you might want to talk to a lawyer and get them to explain FERPA to you, and check your business for compliance.
I work in IT at a small college, and at least as far as we've been told, no college can allow enrollment records to become visible to anyone not enrolled in or teaching a class. That means that even displaying the current course load for a student is considered a privacy breech for which the college is liable.
Of course, there's also the fact that purchasing decisions at most schools are made on 6-10 year schedules. No responsible administrator is going to gamble on putting key academic resources into a system as new and unproven as Facebook. FB (and the whole FB app ecosystem) have a long way to go to convince anyone that they're in it for the long haul.