Tag Archives: GAFE

The facts about student data privacy in Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks

Posted by Jonathan Rochelle, Director of Google Apps for Education

Our goal is to ensure teachers and students everywhere have access to powerful, affordable and easy-to-use tools for teaching, learning and working together. We have always been firmly committed to keeping student information private and secure.

On December 1st, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published a complaint regarding Google Apps for Education (GAFE) and other products and services especially Chrome Sync. While we appreciate the EFF’s focus on student data privacy, we are confident that our tools comply with both the law and our promises, including the Student Privacy Pledge, which we signed earlier this year. The co-authors of the Student Privacy Pledge, The Future of Privacy Forum and The Software and Information Industry Association have both criticized EFF's interpretation of the Pledge and their complaint.

I want to reiterate some important facts about how our products work, how we keep students’ data private and secure, and our commitment to schools, more broadly.

Google Apps for Education Core Services 
The GAFE Core Services -- Gmail, Calendar, Classroom, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Contacts, Groups, Vault and Hangouts -- are the heart of Google’s educational offering to schools. Students’ personal data in these Core Services is only used to provide the services themselves, so students can do things like communicate using email and collaborate on assignments using Google Docs. There are no ads in these Core Services, and student data in these services is not used for advertising purposes.

Chrome Sync
Chrome Sync enables Google Account holders to log into any Chromebook or Chrome browser and find all their apps, extensions, bookmarks, and frequently visited web pages. For students, this means that they can get to work, right away. That's one of the reasons Chromebooks have become so popular in classrooms, especially for schools that can't afford a device for every child. With Chromebooks and Chrome Sync, students can have a personalized experience on any device they share with their classmates.

Personally-identifiable Chrome Sync data in GAFE accounts is only used to power features in Chrome for that person, for example allowing students to access their own browsing data and settings, securely, across devices. In addition, our systems compile data aggregated from millions of users of Chrome Sync and, after completely removing information about individual users, we use this data to holistically improve the services we provide. For example if data shows that millions of people are visiting a webpage that is broken, that site would be moved lower in the search results. This is not connected to any specific person nor is it used to analyze student behaviors. If they choose to, educators, students and administrators can disable Chrome Sync or choose what information to sync in settings whenever they choose. GAFE users’ Chrome Sync data is not used to target ads to individual students.

Additional services
Schools can control whether students or teachers can use additional Google consumer services -- like YouTube, Maps, and Blogger -- with their GAFE accounts. We are committed to ensuring that K-12 student personal information is not used to target ads in these services, and in some cases we show no ads at all. In Google Search, for example, we show no ads when students are logged in.

We build products that help teachers teach and help students learn. We are constantly working to improve our products and we take all feedback from customers and consumer protection groups seriously. You can learn more and stay updated on our commitment at google.com/edu/trust.

David Ross Education Trust scales IT on a nonprofit budget with Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education

Posted by Guy Shearer, Head of IT at the David Ross Education Trust

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Guy Shearer, Head of IT at the David Ross Education Trust (DRET), a UK-registered charity that supports primary and secondary school students in achieving a high standard of academics.

How do you scale IT with limited resources when your organisation triples in size? We faced this challenge at David Ross Education Trust (DRET), where we manage a network of primary and secondary academies across the Midlands and East of England. We grew from seven schools in 2012 to 30 schools in 2014, and had to find a way to bring our 9,000 students more access to technology.

While we had a great many computer labs with desktops, we didn’t see this as a sustainable solution. Much of our time was dedicated to managing systems and installing software updates, fixing computers or teaching people how to use them. We wanted to make technology easier to manage for IT and a more natural part of classroom life rather than isolated in computer labs.

After hearing about Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks, we set up pilot programmes at interested schools and saw students pick up the technology almost immediately. Some brave students even start leading training sessions for their teachers. So far, we’ve deployed 3,000 Apps accounts and 500 Chromebooks at 13 schools, and plan to double this by the end of the year.

The cost savings have helped us expand access to digital learning across our schools. We can buy and manage twice as many Chromebooks as we can desktops or iPads. The £11,000 ($18,137) we used to spend for a single computer lab has been cut in half. Chromebooks are also lightweight, quick to boot up and easy to use, so we’ve been able to bring the devices into classrooms and repurpose the space our old computer labs once occupied.
Students hard at work 
The simplicity of managing Google Apps and Chromebooks allows our IT team to focus on new programs rather than setting up and troubleshooting technology. With the Web-based management console, we can remotely manage every Google Apps account and get detailed reports on how they’re being used. We never have to worry about installing software updates either, they just happen automatically.

With less lost time, we are able to focus on things that add value and improve the impact of our investment. For example, we were able to set up a programme called Digital Leaders that empowers students to train their peers and teachers in Google Apps for Education. The students come up with new ways to use technology that inspire us as educators. In the classroom, Apps and Chromebooks help students learn how to work in groups effectively, create blogs, present their work via Hangouts, and provide feedback through comments in Docs. Google Apps and Chromebooks have helped create a sense of community at DRET while quickly scaling an engaging platform that students and teachers love.

If you’d like to find out more, check out our full case study.

Google Docs and Classroom: your school year sidekicks

Posted by Ritcha Ranjan, Product Manager

School’s in! As you settle into your classes and start to juggle soccer practice, club meetings and homework, we’re here to help. We’ve been spending the summer “break” creating new tools to help you save time, collaborate with classmates and create your best work—all for free.

Schoolwork, minus the work 

Writing papers is now a lot easier with the Research tool in Docs for Android. You can search Google without leaving Docs, and once you find the quotes, facts or images you’re looking for, you can add them to your document with just a couple taps. That means less time switching between apps, and more time perfecting your thesis statement.
 

With Voice typing, you can record ideas or even compose an entire essay without touching your keyboard. To get started, activate Voice typing in the Tools menu when you’re using Docs in Chrome. Then, when you’re on the go, just tap the microphone button on your phone’s keyboard and speak your mind. Voice typing is available in more than 40 languages, so we can help with your French homework, too. Voilà!

Do more, together
We’ve made it easier for you to tell what was added or deleted in Docs—and who made the changes. Now when you’ve left a document and you come back to it later, you can just click “See new changes” to pick up right where your classmates left off.

Forms helps you get a lot of information easily and in one place—so when you want to vote on your class field trip or collect T-shirt sizes for your team, you don’t have to sort through dozens of emails. With the new Forms, you can survey with style—choose one of the colorful new themes or customize your form with your own photo or logo, and we’ll choose the right color palette to match. Easily insert images, GIFs or videos and pick from a selection of question formats. Then send out your survey and watch as the responses roll in!

Your best work, your best you 
Creating presentations, crafting newsletters and managing your team’s budget is hard enough without having to worry about making everything look good. With the new collection of templates in Docs, Sheets and Slides, you can focus on your content while we make sure it gets the expert polish it deserves. Choose from a wide variety of reports, portfolios, resumes and other pre-made templates designed to make your work that much better, and your life that much easier.

With Explore in Sheets, you can now spend less time trying to decipher your data, and more time making a point. Explore creates charts and insights automatically, so you can visualize trends and understand your data in seconds on the web or on your Android. It’s like having an expert analyst right by your side.
 


Mission control, for teachers and students

A year ago, we launched Classroom to save teachers and students time and make it easier to keep classwork organized. Today we’re launching a Share to Classroom Chrome extension to make it easy for teachers to share a website with the entire class at the same time—no matter what kind of laptop students have. Now the whole class can head to a web page together, without losing precious minutes and focus to typos.
 

Rock this school year with Google Docs and Classroom. Your first assignment? Try these new features, which are rolling out today.

Get your students on the same (web)page, instantly



Posted by Catherine Davis, former 4th grade teacher and Director of Academic Technology at Pilgrim School 

Editor's note:Today we’re launching a new Chrome extension, Share to Classroom, which solves a big pain point for teachers: getting all students to the same website during class. The Share to Classroom extension works on any laptop, including Chromebooks, Macs and PCs. Catherine Davis, former 4th grade teacher and Director of Academic Technology at Pilgrim School, piloted the Classroom extension with Mrs. Shorkey’s 3rd grade class, and here she describes her experience using this new extension and the impact on her students.


Sharing a website with my students is a great way to get them engaged. When we studied South America, I shared a video of Tierra del Fuego, and my students were able to view the coast, hear the wind and see the waves soar. But getting a class full of 4th graders on the same web page is a huge challenge. I typically write the URL on the board, then walk around to help each student who misses a capital or underscore or backslash. My students get frustrated, I get frustrated, and before I know it 10 minutes of precious teaching time is lost.

So I was thrilled to pilot the Share to Classroom extension. With the extension I can open a website and “push” it to my Google Classroom students, so the page opens immediately on all their devices. Our 3rd graders gasped when we tried it – the webpage instantaneously popped up on all of their screens.
The new extension lets me engage my students and help them drive their own learning on 1:1 devices at our school. When our 3rd graders were studying Native American culture, I pushed a website to the class so they could research traditional clothing and food. The students aren’t locked to the page I send, and one student navigated from there to an even better site. With the Classroom extension, the student was able to push the new site to me, and I reviewed and pushed to the entire class. She had a boost of confidence when her discovery drove class discussion.
Using the extension also lets me think on my feet. When discussing pioneers, a brave student raised his hand and asked “What’s a stage coach?” I realized my students hadn’t been exposed to the term. I immediately pulled up a definition and video and pushed it to the class. I also saved the webpage as a draft to post to my other Classroom students later. I could have projected on a screen, but the intimacy of having the webpage on each device allows students to explore on their own, hear clearly and watch repeatedly. It also levels the playing field for ELL and students of different backgrounds so everyone starts literally on the same page.

As teachers, we never feel we have enough time to do everything we want with our students. The new Share to Classroom extension gives us back those few minutes it takes to get students to the same place and makes learning about investigating, not about navigating.

*Note: Google Apps admins can install the extension for their entire domain so that it’s easiest for teachers and students to get started. Teachers and students both need the extension in order to push web pages to each other.