Please read the following Disclaimer and Privacy Notice carefully as they contain important information about your rights and responsibilities. By registering on the website, you will be asked to consent to these policies.

Disclaimer of Content

European Schoolnet (legal name: EUN Partnership aisbl, hereinafter called European Schoolnet), the coordinator of the EmpowerED project, funded until the 31st December 2025 by the European Union under Grant 101100704, maintains this public portal at https://www.empowerededtech.eu/. Contact information of European Schoolnet can be found below.

European Schoolnet is established in Brussels, Belgium, and Belgian laws apply to any use of the website.

We strive to keep the information on this website as accurate and timely as possible. If errors are brought to our attention (at privacy@eun.org) we will correct them, but we will accept no liability or responsibility whatsoever with regard to the use of the information on this website or any linked external sites. The content of the website is the sole responsibility of European Schoolnet and it does not represent the opinion of the European Commission (EC), and the EC is not responsible for any use that might be made of information contained.

It is our goal to minimize disruption caused by technical errors. However, European Schoolnet accepts no liability/responsibility as we cannot guarantee that our service will not be interrupted.

European Schoolnet reserves the right, at its discretion, to suspend, change, modify, add or remove (portions of) the website at any time, including any materials which may have been made available by content contributors.

Copyright

We take every measure possible to ensure that all copyrights are respected. If you notice a copyright infringement, please notify us as soon as possible.

Several sections of this site make use of web feed technologies to present content that may originate from several third-party websites which are relevant to the Empowered project. European Schoolnet collects and formats this data. However, use of this content may be subject to different copyright/terms of use. Please refer to the portal to which the service links if you wish to use content from third-party sites.

Copyright notice

© - All right reserved. Except where otherwise stated, content made available either by European Schoolnet or users on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). Licensing under Creative Commons licenses does not itself affect the ownership of the copyright. Content from third party websites is subject to their own copyright restrictions, please refer to the website of origin for more information.

Trademarks and logo

Please note that use of the website does not imply any right or licence to use any of the logos or trademarks that appear on the site. Such usage is always subject to the express written approval of the owner of the logo or trademark. Breach of this requirement may involve the imposition of penalties or damages against the infringer.

Privacy Notice

1. Introduction

European Schoolnet is developing this website, which is subject to the privacy notice set-out below.

European Schoolnet takes the protection of your privacy seriously. We exclusively collect, store and retain our users’ personal data to provide the best possible service and treat this data with the utmost care in accordance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) . This Privacy Notice outlines the policies by which the EmpowerED website collects, manages, and uses the data provided to us by users, and how users of the website may exercise their data protection rights. Registration on the EmpowerED website and/or its services indicates that you have accepted this Privacy Notice and agreed to abide by it. The website is controlled by EUN Partnership aisbl, the legal name for European Schoolnet. Contact information can be found below. European Schoolnet is responsible (i.e., the data "controller") for processing your personal data as explained in this Privacy Notice. 

This website is organised into three parts:

• Public website, with public information on the initiative and the project, for guest users.
• Private platform, hosting the community and the matchmaking tools, for registered members.
• Admin community, hosting the management tools, for registered administrators.

2. When do we collect and process your personal data?
You directly provide European Schoolnet with most of the data we collect through this website. We collect personal data when you:

• Visit this website,
• Sign up for the EmpowerED Online Community and match-making tool,
• Voluntarily participate in surveys and questionnaires which are conducted through this website from time to time,
• Register for courses and events which are organized by EmpowerED and/or its private spaces/projects and which may be promoted from time to time on this website,
• Contact us directly via social media accounts or email.

3. What personal data do we process and why?
When you visit the EmpowerED website and engage in one of the services described in Section 2, we will collect and use your personal data to: 

• Improve the EmpowerED website’s content and the overall user experience.
• Detect security incidents, protect against malicious activity, and fix system errors.
• Allow you to sign up for the community and matchmaking tools. 
• Allow you to participate in surveys and questionnaires.
• Assist you in the registration for events and courses.
• Facilitate the communication between you and us.

To achieve the above-mentioned purposes, we process the following personal data in the following circumstances:

3.1 Website visits

As a general policy, you are not required to disclose your personal data as a condition of using the EmpowerED website. No basic identity information, such as your name, postal address, or email address is automatically collected from your visit to the website. However, we may automatically collect personal data, including technical information and information about your visit, from each of your visits to our website, as detailed in point 3.6 below.

3.2 Registration for  events and courses and participation in surveys or questionnaires

When you visit our public website, you may be invited to participate in events, surveys or questionnaires launched by the EmpowerED project or its private spaces/projects, which are promoted from time to time on this website. The types of personal data collected when you register for the events and courses or participate in surveys and questionnaires are described in their own privacy statements. The privacy statements will give you details of the purpose and legal grounds of the processing, who will have access to your personal data, and the period of time for which the data will be kept. In addition, the privacy statements for each event/course/survey/questionnaire will detail your rights in respect of the data we collect, where you can get further information on the privacy statements, and the official organisations to which you can complain in the event that you feel that your data protection rights have been infringed. 

We use Survey Monkey to process our surveys and questionnaires and for registration to some events (such as online events) and this processing may additionally be subject to their own terms and conditions which can be accessed at https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/legal/privacy-policy/ . 

We use eTouches to manage and register participants for our events and this processing may additionally be subject to their own terms and conditions which can be accessed at https://www.etouches.com/event-software/privacy-policy. 

3.3 Sign up for the community and matchmaking tool

To join the EmpowerED Online Community, connect with likeminded stakeholders of the European EdTech community and be a part of the matchmaking prototype users may register here: https://www.empowerededtech.eu/. Registered users can actively contribute to the EmpowerED community by submitting resources, events, good practices, external tools, forum and blog posts.

During the registration process, users will be requested to confirm they have consented to this Privacy Notice.

To best serve our users, the EmpowerED platform requires users to submit the following information as a part of the registration process and profiles management:

• First name, Last name, Email address, Country, Picture (optional)
• Member type (school representative, mentor, edtech organization…)
• Matchmaking info (only for schools: teaching levels, subjects, relevant experience…)

If you submit resources, events, good practices, external tools, forum posts and blog posts, the personal data submitted through these tools will be recorded and linked to your account (personal identification).

Registered users’ information (except for the email addresses users provide at their registration) is visible to all users of the community. Any personal data mentioned in any comment or submission voluntarily made by a registered user is visible to other registered users in the EmpowerED community. Registered users’ information is also displayed in the Public Profiles Directory of the EmpowerED community.

During the registration process, users will be asked to specify a unique username and corresponding password. Using this username/password combination, users may access their accounts and use the restricted area of the site. Users can edit or delete their profile information at any time.

3.4 Contacting European Schoolnet

We also collect personal data such as your full name, email, and any other personal data you choose to share when you communicate with us through our contact form (https://new.empowerededtech.eu/about/contact), social media, or e-mail. If you choose to contact us directly, we will only use the personal data you have provided us with for the purposes of responding to your message and, in case, providing the service you require.

3.5 Other forms of collection/ Information collected by automated means

Personal data such as your IP address, internet service provider (ISP), web browser, operating system, approximate times of use, referring site, specific user interactions with the systems functionality and any similar data exchanged between a user's computer and the servers of the EmpowerED website will be collected. These will not be linked to specific user accounts. We use Matomo for this (see Sections 9 and 10 below). This information is accessible only to the systems administrators of European Schoolnet and is used only to ensure the broadest compatibility and connectivity between users and the EmpowerED website, and to take appropriate action in case of unlawful or inappropriate behaviour.

Aggregated statistics will be also retrieved regularly on the data collected through the public site and community, including, but not limited to, the number of users and organisations during a specific period, the labels assigned (number, type, country etc.), the average scores in assessment forms (for example by year and country), the usage of the community (for example, number of posts, subjects etc.).

4. Who do we share your data with?

In principle, we will not share your personal data with anyone except European Schoolnet designated staff (employees and in-house experts), the EmpowerED project partners , and third parties listed under this Privacy Notice. European Schoolnet has access to full account information and can modify and/or delete information as needed to maintain the integrity of the user database or to ensure the proper operation of the EmpowerED website.

Your personal data is shared between the parties listed above as far as this is necessary:

• to manage the EmpowerED services (match making prototype, community content management and notifications to community users about the service and the community content),
• to respond to you and to provide the service you require,
• to enable us to use the responses to the surveys and questionnaires to manage the activities and for evaluation and research purposes,
• to process your participation in events.

If you register in the community:
your first name, last name, country, email, description, role, interests, and matchmaking details, as recorded in your Profile (User and Organisation) will be accessible and displayed for all users of the community.

If you submit forum posts and blog posts in the community:

• the personal data submitted will be displayed for all users of the community,
• authors of this content will also be available and displayed for all user of the community.

If you submit resources in the community:

• the personal data submitted may be displayed for all user of the community if the website administrators consider it as of value for the community (Publication in the community galleries of good practices),
• authors will also be displayed for all users of the community.

European Schoolnet does not sell your personal data to third parties. Apart from the third parties referred to by this Privacy Notice, no third parties will receive your personal data, unless this is explicitly disclosed to you in advance in a separate privacy policy or we are required to do so by law, e.g., in the framework of a judicial enquiry or at the request of the competent legal authorities. Upon request, data may be transferred in an anonymous way to third parties for research purposes.

The third-party service providers process your personal data only on behalf of European Schoolnet. When we use a third-party service provider, we only disclose personal data that is necessary for them to provide their services. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

5.Data Transfers

Your personal data may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside the European Union (‘’EU’’)/European Economic Area (‘’EEA’’) in which our third-party service providers specified in this Privacy Notice are located or have servers. We ensure that the recipient of your personal data offers an adequate level of protection, by engaging in data processing agreements with our third-party service providers, which provide for standard contractual clauses for the transfer of data as approved by the European Commission.
Your personal data may also be accessible to parties outside the EU/EEA via the EmpowerED Online Community. Registered users located outside the EU/EEA may have access to the personal data displayed on your user profile or included in your contributions to the community.

6. The legal basis of data processing

In terms of personal data processing activities for the purpose of facilitating communication between you and us, we rely on our legitimate interest to be able to respond to requests, questions, or remarks when you contact us via social media, or e-mail.
In terms of personal data processing activities for the purpose of improving the website’s content and the overall experience, we rely on our own legitimate interest in providing an interesting online space to our visitors.
In terms of personal data processing activities for the purposes of detecting and preventing malware, illegal content, and other types of misuse, we rely on our legitimate interest to keep our online presence safe.
When you sign up to the community and matchmaking tools, participate in any of the surveys/questionnaires conducted through this website or register for any event/course promoted on this website, your consent serves as the legal basis for our processing of your personal data.
If you consent to us processing your personal information, please note that you may withdraw this consent at any time. If you have problems withdrawing your earlier given consent, you can contact us as indicated in the final section of this Privacy Notice.
Please note that your consent can only be withdrawn with future effect and such a withdrawal does not have any influence on the lawfulness of past processing. In some cases, we may be entitled despite your withdrawal to continue to process your personal information on a different legal basis—to perform a contract, for example.

7. How long do we store your personal data?

Your personal data are only processed for as long as needed to achieve the purposes which are described above or, when we asked for your consent, up until such time when you withdraw your consent. As a general rule, we will de-identify your personal data when they are no longer necessary for the purposes outlined above or when the retention period as explained in this section has expired.
All personal data we collect through our interactions with you via the EmpowerED communication channels will be kept for as long as required to communicate with you, but also to keep an historical archive of our communications. This allows us to revert back to earlier communications if you return to us with new questions, requests, or other input.
All personal data we collect from the registered users of the EmpowerED will be kept for until you contact us to terminate your account(s) and/or request us to delete your personal data you submitted earlier, which will result in the deletion of the personal data that you have provided. Personal data collected from the registered users will in any case not be retained longer than five years after the user’s last use of the website.
For our events/courses/surveys/questionnaires, the period of retention will be indicated in the separate privacy policy for the activity concerned.
Beyond this period, your data will not be retained except in an anonymised form, or as far as required:

• to show that we have performed the activities in accordance with applicable laws and the EU's audit regulations.
• for research purposes and publication.

8. What are your data protection rights?

European Schoolnet would like to make sure you are fully aware of all your data protection rights. Every website user is entitled to the following:

The right to access – You have the right to request European Schoolnet for copies of your personal data. However, note that you must specify for which processing activities you would like to have access to your personal data.
The right to rectification – You have the right to request that European Schoolnet correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request European Schoolnet to complete the information you believe is incomplete. Please specify the context in which we use your personal data (e.g., to register for an event or sign up to the EmpowerED Online Community), so that we may assess your request swiftly and accurately.
The right to erasure – You have the right to request that European Schoolnet erase your personal data, if these personal data are no longer needed for the purposes for which we collected them in the first place, if our collection of them was illegitimate or if you have successfully exercised your right to withdraw your consent or your right to object to the processing of your personal data. When one of these circumstances applies, we will immediately delete your personal data unless the law, regulatory obligations or administrative or judicial orders prohibit us to delete your personal data.
The right to restrict processing – You can ask that we restrict the processing of your personal data:

The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to European Schoolnet processing of your personal data, when we process your personal data on the basis of our own legitimate interests, i.e., you have not given us your consent and we do not need them for the execution or performance of an agreement nor to comply with legal obligations.
The right to data portability – You have the right to request that European Schoolnet transfer the data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

Whenever we process your personal data based on your consent, you also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

• during the time we are assessing your request for the correction of your personal data;
• during the time we are assessing your objection to the processing of your personal data;
• when such processing was unlawful, but you prefer restriction to erasure.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, we ask that you send us an e-mail at privacy@eun.org. Your request should be dated and should clearly state and specify which right you wish to exercise. We will notify you as soon as reasonably possible and at the latest thirty (30) days after having received the request. Please note that whenever you wish to exercise a right, we may ask you to provide proof of identity. We do this to avoid that we have a data breach on our hands, e.g., because an unauthorized person pretends to be you and exercises a right in your name.

9. Matomo

Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform. A web analytics platform is used by a website owner in order to measure, collect, analyse and report visitors’ data for purposes of understanding and optimizing their website. If you would like to see what Matomo looks like, you can access a demo version at: https://demo.matomo.cloud. Matomo is used to analyse the behaviour of the website visitors to identify potential pitfalls; not found pages, search engine indexing issues, which contents are the most appreciate, etc. Once the data is processed (number of visitors reaching a not found pages, viewing only one page, etc.), Matomo generates reports so that we can take action, for example changing the layout of the pages, publishing some fresh content, etc. Matomo collects information without identifying you directly.

10. Cookies

To make this site work properly, we sometimes place small data files called cookies on your device. Most big websites do this too.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, language, font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you do not have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.

How do we use cookies?

On our website, we only use a very limited number of cookies:

• User preferences: These cookies help to improve a user's experience of a website by providing a more personalized service, without having to ask you every time again; more specifically, our Liferay Portal stores a limited number of user preferences, such as language.

More detailed information about the type of cookies we are using can be found in the following table:

How to control cookies?

You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see aboutcookies.org. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer, and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some services and functionalities may not work.

11.Data security

European Schoolnet has put in place appropriate technical and security measures to protect our infrastructure, systems, applications, premises, and processes where your personal data is stored, from accidental loss, alteration, disclosure or use or access in an unauthorised way. We process only the personal data required for achieving the purposes we have communicated to you, and we restrict access to your personal data to European Schoolnet designated staff and specified third parties with a business need to know.
We have also put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. We have also put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

12.Privacy Policies of other Websites

The EmpowerED website contains links to other websites. This Privacy Notice applies only to this website, so if you click on a link to another website, you should read their privacy policy.
This Privacy Notice does not apply to other public or private resources, spaces and tools whose links are shared on our website and which have their own privacy statements. This Privacy Notice does not apply to data processing operations conducted by the EmpowerED project partners other than European Schoolnet or by the European Commission. These operations, links of which are shared on our website, have their own privacy statements.
The EmpowerED website includes links to third-party websites and social media pages. Clicking on those links may allow third parties to collect or share personal data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their use of your personal data. We recommend that you read any privacy notices on their websites carefully. In addition, if you linked to our website from a third-party website, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party website and recommend that you check the privacy notice of that third party website.

13. Changes within this Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice may be updated periodically and without prior notice to reflect changes in our personal information practices. Any and all changes to this Privacy Notice will be posted here and will take effect upon their publication. This Privacy Notice was last updated on 27.11.2024.

14. Contacting European Schoolnet

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, the processing of your personal data, if you would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, or if you have any complaint regarding the processing of your personal data by European Schoolnet, you can always contact us:
via e-mail:
Data controller: privacy@eun.org 
via post:
Data controller
EUN Partnership aisbl
Rue de Trèves 61
B-1040 Brussels
Belgium
via telephone:
+32 2 790 75 75

15. Making an Official Complaint

If you feel that we have infringed your data protection rights, you may make an official complaint to the data protection authorities where you are resident or the Belgian Data Protection Authorities at the following address:
Belgian Data Protection Authority
Rue de la Presse 35
B-1000 Bruxelles