Privacy Policy
Guiding Neuron helps teachers grade student work. This explains what we collect, why we hold it, who else sees it, and how long we keep it.
Last updated 26 September 2026 · Silicon Neuron LLC
Who we are
Guiding Neuron is a product of Silicon Neuron LLC. When a school or teacher uses it, we act as a service provider to that school — the school remains in control of its students’ education records, and we process them only as the school directs.
For anything on this page, write to privacy@guidingneuron.com.
What we collect
From teachers. Name, email address, password (stored hashed — we never see it), the courses and rubrics you create, and your billing details if you buy credits.
About students. Name, and an email address only if the course is run online. Uploaded work — documents, photos and scans. Grades, written feedback and annotations. Quiz attempts and answers.
Field trips. A trip holds what you type into it — its title and date, your notes, and, if you choose to add them, the place’s street address and website. Those are yours to enter or leave blank.
A picture you send to “Snap an idea”. If you photograph a flyer, a poster or a sign — or send a screenshot of something you saw on your phone — to turn it into a trip idea, that picture is sent to an AI provider, read once, and then deleted by our server — whether or not it could be read. It is never added to a child’s record and never shown to anyone else. What survives is the trip idea it produced. If the picture has an address or a website on it, we may copy those words into the idea and we label them as copied from your picture, unchecked by us. We do not work out where the picture was taken, and we do not read location data off it. A screenshot can show more than the event — a name, an account, a message — and we ask the AI to read only what the post is about; either way the picture itself is deleted just the same, so nothing in it is kept.
Places you have visited, at county level (the field-trip map). If you put a trip on the map, we also store the county you chose — and, if you tell us, the national park. The map itself never stores an address, a pin or a coordinate, and nothing is worked out from your photos, your ZIP or an address you typed: you choose the county yourself by clicking it. A county is an area of hundreds of square miles, so the map records where a family has explored rather than where a child has been. You can take a trip off the map at any time without deleting the trip.
A child’s date of birth (homeschool only). If you use Guiding Neuron as a homeschooling parent, you may optionally add your child’s date of birth — we use it only to tailor age-appropriate planning and learning suggestions. It is never required, never shared, and you can remove it at any time. We do not collect a date of birth for students in an educator’s class.
What we never collect. Political or religious affiliation. Voting history. Biometric data.
A course can also run on student names alone, with no student account and no email address collected. We recommend that for younger students.
Why we hold it
To do the job the teacher asked for: draft a grade, show it to them for review, and keep the result so their gradebook works. We have no second use for it.
How AI is used
When a teacher runs a grading job, the student’s work is sent to an AI provider along with whatever the teacher is grading against, and a draft grade comes back. A draft is not a grade. It counts only when the teacher confirms it, and the teacher can change any part of it.
We only use providers that have agreed to keep nothing once the response is returned, and no provider may train its models on your data. The providers we use are listed on the subprocessors page.
Some features are for material a teacher writes — course content, rubrics and images. Those are not intended for student work, and the terms ask teachers not to put student work into them.
How long we keep it
We do not keep student data indefinitely. Each kind of data has a period and a trigger that ends it:
| Data | How long | What ends it |
|---|---|---|
| Field trips — the trip and what you typed into it (notes, and any address or website you added), its hours, and the county you put it on the map in | Kept while the School Year it belongs to is kept, and deleted with it. Removing a trip deletes it immediately; taking a trip off the map clears the county on its own, without deleting the trip. | Trip deleted · School Year deleted · taken off the map · deletion request |
| A picture you send to “Snap an idea” — a photo of a flyer, a poster or a sign, or a screenshot from your phone | Read once, then deleted — by our server, as the last thing it does with the picture, whether or not it could read it. It is never added to a child’s record and never shown to anyone else. What survives is the trip idea it produced, which is a field trip like any other. | The read finishes (success or not) · you close the window · deletion request |
| Student work, grades, feedback and annotations | Kept for the academic term it belongs to, then deleted. Terms are removed automatically 24 months after they end, or sooner if the school chooses a shorter period. It is also deleted with the teacher's account. | Term ends · deleted by the teacher · teacher's account deleted · deletion request |
| Student account (name, email address, sign-in) | Deleted automatically after 24 months with no sign-in. A student may delete their account sooner, and may join again later from a new invitation. | 24 months of inactivity · deleted by the student · deletion request |
| Class roster record (the name, the student's own email if the teacher recorded one, and optional parent contact a teacher recorded for a student) | Kept while the student is enrolled in any of the teacher's courses, or until the teacher archives the record. An archived record with no enrollment for 24 months is removed automatically. The student's work and grades follow the course they belong to. | Archived by the teacher · 24 months with no enrollment · account closure |
| Records a teacher or co-op transferred to you (homeschool) | Kept with your family's records, independent of any School Year, until you delete them or the child's account is removed. The teacher's own copy follows the course it belongs to. A sealed packet a teacher sent that nobody claimed is removed after 60 days. | Deleted by you · child account removed · unclaimed for 60 days |
| Quiz attempts and answers | Same as the course they belong to — deleted with it | Course deletion · account closure |
| Teacher account and course structure | Kept while the account has a plan, and for 2 years after its last plan ends (see “An account without a plan” below); deleted within 30 days if you close it | Account closure · 2 years without a plan |
| An account without a plan — educator, homeschool or family — and everything in it | Kept while the account has a plan: a paid plan, a complimentary plan, or a school agreement that covers it. When an account has gone 2 years without one — counted from when its last plan ended, or from sign-up if it never had one — the account and its data are deleted. Before that we e-mail the account several times: about a week after the plan ends, then 1 year, 90 days, 30 days, 7 days and 1 day before. Until then you can download your records or delete the account from the plan page, and starting a plan at any point keeps everything. A school's signed agreement controls how long that school's data is kept. | 2 years without a plan · deletion request · account closure |
| Rubrics and templates | Kept while the teacher's account is active. These contain no student data and are not removed when a course or term is deleted. | Account closure · deleted by the teacher |
| Activity log (who did what, and when) | 24 months, then deleted | Age |
| Billing records (invoices, payments) | 7 years — retained because tax and accounting law requires it. Contains no student data. | Legal requirement |
| Record that you agreed to these terms | 6 years. If you delete your account we keep the record but remove your email address, IP address and browser details — what remains cannot be read back to you. | Age · kept after closure because it is the only evidence of what was agreed |
| Record that a deletion happened | 3 years. Contains the date, what kind of deletion it was and how many items were removed. It never contains a name, an email address or any student work. | Age |
| Receipt that a course was handed to another account, or that a student's records were transferred to a family | Kept after either account is deleted. The receipt holds the date, the course title and edition, and the two adults' e-mail addresses — it is the only record of what was handed to whom. It holds no student work. Removed on request. | Deletion request |
| Backups | Rolling 30 days. A deletion takes effect immediately and clears backups within 30 days. | Backup rotation |
| Data sent to an AI provider for grading | Not retained by the provider. | Discarded once the response is returned |
| Storybook character photo (optional, homeschool) | Held only while a privacy-approved (zero-data-retention) model writes an appearance description — a few seconds — then deleted, and on any error. Never stored, never reused; the provider retains nothing. | Discarded immediately after the description is written |
| Storybook character description (appearance only, never a name) | Kept until the parent edits or clears it, or the account is deleted. It is the only text used to illustrate the storybook — photos are never sent to the illustrator. | Parent edit or clear · account closure |
A deletion request takes effect in the live system straight away. Encrypted backups roll over within 30 days, after which no copy remains.
What we promise
- We do not train AI models on student work. Not our own models, and no provider we use may train on it either.
- We do not sell student data. Not to anyone, in any form, ever — including anonymised or aggregated forms.
- We do not advertise to students, and we do not build profiles. There is no advertising in the product, and we do not profile students.
- We use student data only to provide the service to that school. Student work is used to produce a draft grade for the teacher who uploaded it, and for nothing else.
- We do not re-disclose student data. Beyond the subprocessors listed on this page, student data goes nowhere without the school's written authorisation.
- A teacher reviews every AI grade before it counts. An AI grade is a draft. It counts only once a teacher confirms it.
- We delete on request. Email privacy@guidingneuron.com and we delete within 30 days, then confirm in writing.
Access, correction and deletion
Parents and students. Under FERPA, the right to inspect and correct an education record runs through the school, not through us. Please contact your school or teacher — they can see everything we hold about a student and can export or correct it. If a school asks us for help, we respond within five business days.
Schools. Write to privacy@guidingneuron.com to request export or deletion of your students’ data. We complete deletion within 30 days and confirm in writing.
Teachers. Three controls, and each removes the stored files themselves — not just the database records:
- Remove a student from a course — deletes the work they submitted to it, with their grades and feedback. Their work in your other courses is untouched.
- Delete a course — deletes everything submitted to it.
- Delete a term — deletes every course in that term and all the student work inside them. Rubrics and templates survive: they belong to the teacher and contain no student data.
- Delete your account (Settings) — deletes every course, every file and your login.
None of these can be undone. A school can also email privacy@guidingneuron.com and we will complete a deletion within 30 days, then confirm.
Students under 13
Guiding Neuron is offered to schools and teachers, and to homeschooling parents and legal guardians for their own children — never directly to children. Student accounts are created only at a teacher’s or school’s direction, or by the child’s own parent or legal guardian; a child cannot sign themselves up as a student.
Where a school uses the product with students under 13, the school consents on parents’ behalf for educational use, as the FTC permits under COPPA, and is responsible for notifying parents. We do not use children’s data for advertising, and we do not build profiles for any purpose other than the grading a teacher requested.
Where a homeschooling parent or legal guardian uses the product, they are the account’s administrator: they attest to being the parent or legal guardian of every student they enroll, and their consent to our collecting and processing their children’s information — given and recorded when they create their account — is the verifiable parental consent COPPA requires. They create each child’s login themselves; children sign in with a username, their account address cannot receive email, and we never send them any. The same commitments apply: no advertising, no profiles beyond the grading their parent requested.
How it is protected
- Encrypted in transit and at rest.
- Access is restricted so a teacher can reach their own courses and no one else's.
- Uploaded files are private and served only through short-lived links.
- Significant actions are recorded in an audit trail.
- Uploads are restricted by file type and size, and Office documents are converted server-side before they are displayed.
If something goes wrong
If student data is exposed, we notify affected schools within 72 hours of discovering it, with what happened, what data was involved, and what we are doing about it. Schools may have their own deadlines to notify parents; we give them what they need to meet them.
Changes to this policy
The date at the top of this page changes whenever the substance does. If a change affects how student data is handled, we tell schools before it takes effect rather than after.