Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 10, 2026

Short version

This site does not collect, store, or transmit any personal information from anyone who visits it. There are no accounts, no forms, and no analytics or tracking scripts. Almost every page is a static file with nowhere for visitor data to go, even if that were the intent.

The one exception is the Working in Python pathway, which embeds an in-browser Python environment (JupyterLite) so you can run notebooks live. That environment uses your browser’s own local storage to save your work between visits. That storage stays entirely on your device and is never transmitted to any server. It is explained in full below.

Why that is true, technically

This site is built with Jekyll and published through GitHub Pages. At publish time, every page is compiled once into a plain HTML file. Those files are pushed to GitHub, and GitHub Pages serves those exact, unchanging files to every visitor’s browser.

That means:

• There is no server-side application. No code runs per visitor, per request, or at all, on any server under anyone’s control. Where a page needs to run code, such as the in-browser Python notebooks described below, that execution happens entirely inside the visitor’s own browser, not on a server.
• There is no database. A database exists to give an application somewhere to write data. There is no application here, so there is nothing to write to and nothing that persists between visits.
• There are no forms or submission handlers. Nothing on this site asks a visitor to type in a name, email address, or any other information, because there is no code path that could do anything with it if they did.
• The entire site is public source. Every file that produces every page is visible in the public repository at github.com/porttack/learn. There is no hidden logic. Anyone can verify this policy by reading the source directly, or by viewing a page’s source in their browser.

In short, this is not a case of “we promise not to look at the data.” There is no mechanism by which data could be collected in the first place.

What is not on this site

• No user accounts or login of any kind
• No analytics (for example, Google Analytics), tracking pixels, or advertising code
• No comment sections or embedded third-party widgets that require a login
• No forms, quizzes, or file uploads that transmit data anywhere
• No cookies of any kind used to identify, track, or recognize you across visits or across sites. (The Working in Python pathway saves your notebook files locally using your browser’s storage, not cookies; explained in the next section.)

Interactive Python notebooks (JupyterLite)

The Working in Python pathway embeds JupyterLite, a full Python environment that runs entirely inside your browser tab using WebAssembly (specifically, Pyodide, a WebAssembly build of Python). There is no server-side Python kernel anywhere. When you run a cell, the computation happens on your own device, the same way a browser game runs entirely on your device.

To let you keep your work between visits, without a server to save it to, JupyterLite stores your notebook files and workspace settings using your browser’s own local storage: mainly IndexedDB (for the notebook files themselves) and localStorage (for interface state, like which files you have open). This is ordinary behavior for any browser application that needs to remember state without a server, the same way a browser game might save your progress locally. It means:

• Your saved notebooks and edits live only in your browser, on your device.
• That storage is scoped to this site’s address, the same as any other website’s local storage. Other sites cannot read it.
• Nothing in it is transmitted to, or retrievable by, this site, the course teacher, or GitHub. There is no server-side code here that could receive it, per the architecture described above.
• You can clear it at any time through your browser’s site settings. Doing so resets your saved notebooks in that environment.

No cookie is involved in saving your work. (JupyterLite’s underlying code is adapted from full Jupyter Server, which separately checks for a _xsrf cookie as cross-site request forgery protection when talking to a real server over the network. Because there is no real server here, that check is inert: it has nothing to read and nothing meaningful to set. It plays no role in storing your notebooks and carries no information about you.)

Hosting and standard web server logs

This site is hosted by GitHub, Inc. through GitHub Pages. Like any web host, GitHub’s own infrastructure necessarily processes basic connection information (such as IP address, browser type, and requested page) to deliver files to a visitor’s browser. That is standard web server operation performed by GitHub as the hosting provider. It is not something collected, stored, or accessible to whoever maintains this site’s content. GitHub’s handling of that information is described in GitHub’s own Privacy Statement, which governs GitHub’s infrastructure, not this site’s content or this policy.

Why this means there are no FERPA education records here

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA, 34 CFR Part 99) governs “education records”: records directly related to a student that are maintained by an educational agency or a party acting for one. This site maintains no such records, because:

• It collects no student-identifiable information, as described above.
• It stores no grades, assignments, submissions, or student work product. Anything shown on this site (including course templates, such as example engineering-team documents in the robotics pathway) is instructional material, not a record about any individual student.
• It has no database, account system, or backend that could persist any visitor’s data, student or otherwise. This includes the in-browser Python notebooks described above: work saved there is written only to the student’s own browser storage, never to a server, so it is not a record maintained by anyone but the student’s own device.

Because no personally identifiable student information is collected, stored, or transmitted through this site, its use does not implicate FERPA’s disclosure or consent requirements.

Links to other sites

Some pages link to outside resources: competition manuals, Creative Commons license text, reference documentation, and the companion python.porttack.com site. Those sites have their own privacy practices, which this policy does not cover.

Children’s privacy

Because this site collects no personal information from any visitor, it does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. There is no consent mechanism because there is nothing to consent to.

Changes to this policy

If this site ever adds something that changes what is described above (a form, a comment system, analytics, or similar), this page will be updated first, with a new effective date, before that feature goes live. The full history of this page is also public in the site’s repository.

Questions

Questions about this policy can be filed as an issue on the public repository for this site.