Privacy and access
How Happy Valley High (demo)’s notebook works, in plain terms.
Who can read the notebook
Anyone who enters Happy Valley High (demo)’s access code, plus the building’s administrators. The code is shared with staff by the principal. If the code is forwarded to someone outside the building, that person can read and post too, until the principal changes the code. Changing it signs everyone out, and staff then enter the new code.
Once you enter the code, that browser stays in for 180 days. On a shared computer, tick “This is a shared computer” when you enter the code, and that browser forgets it when it’s closed or after 12 hours. You can also use “Leave this notebook” at the bottom of the page to sign that browser out right away.
If you don’t have the code, “Ask your principal for it” emails your name, email and note to the building’s administrators, who decide whether to reply with the code. The code is never sent automatically, and the request isn’t saved in the notebook.
Search engines are asked not to list the notebook, and entries can’t be read without the code.
What is kept when you post
What you type and choose: your description, a student learning observation if you add one, how it went, and any tool, role, grade or topic you pick, plus the date. If you choose “Add my name,” the name you type is kept and shown.
There are no staff accounts. Nothing about who you are is stored with an entry: no email, no login, and no network address. The service’s hosting provider keeps short-lived technical logs for security, which are not connected to entries.
When you post, you get a private link that removes your entry. Only a scrambled copy of that link is stored, so nobody can use the stored copy to find or remove your entry.
What appears on an entry
Your description, your student learning observation if you wrote one, how it went, any optional details you chose, the date, and either your name or “Shared without a name.” Names are not checked, so a displayed name is whatever the contributor typed.
Even without a name, the details of a story can make someone recognizable in a small school. Share what you’re comfortable with.
The summary of all entries
Anyone who can read the notebook can ask for a short summary of all its entries. To write it, the entries are sent to Anthropic, the company that makes the AI model Claude. Names are left out; the description, student learning observation, how it went, the optional details, the date and the current question, if there is one, are sent. Anthropic doesn’t use what it receives through this service to train its models. How the summary is written explains what Claude is asked to do with them. The summary is kept and shown to everyone with access until an entry is added or removed, and then a new one can be written.
What the principal can see
The principal or designated administrator reads the same notebook you do. They can’t see who posted an entry without a name, because that information is never collected. They can remove an entry that shares private information or is inappropriate, and every removal is recorded. Removal deletes the entry; it can’t be undone.
The people who run AI Field Notes
AI Field Notes is made and run by True North Digital, LLC.
Entries in this notebook can be read by the people who develop AI Field Notes, without contributor names, for research and to support and improve the service. For research, they may also have Claude summarize entries from several schools together, again without contributor names. No entries, anonymized or otherwise, are sold or shared outside the service. Anything published from them is in summary form and doesn’t name a school or person without permission.
Seeing entries with names, for example when a school asks for help, requires recording a reason. That access is logged and shown to the building’s administrators.
If the notebook closes
If the notebook is deactivated, staff see a “closed” message. Entries are kept, not deleted, and building administrators can still read and export them. Entries are deleted only at the school’s request.