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Comment by freshflowers | Hacker News Reader

10 years ago, people would have welcomed this. Today, the brand Google is a red flag for any school that cares about their reputation and any parent who cares about their child's privacy.

It's utterly unsellable unless Google follows the old "evil" Microsoft route and simply bribes schools. And even that won't be enough to counter the shit storm that will hit any school that delivers the privacy of it's students into the hands of Google.

(The link sends me to the Dutch version of this. Google is seriously tone deaf it they think they can still sell this here.)

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Google has quite a good history of keeping private information private. Unless I'm mistaken. In anycase, Chromebooks are quite popular in education, and the efficient integration of services at a low (or free) cost outweighs any unsubstantiated privacy concerns.

The reality of Google's brand image is different.

Schools don't buy software based on privacy and the privacy policies of much of the software being used by schools is often worse.

Maybe it won't sell in EU, but you don't need the EU to run a successful profitable business.

"Schools don't buy software based on privacy"

They should do in my opinion. I find it depressing that so many people overlook or dismiss privacy concerns, particularly where kids are concerned.

The kids who are asked to use Google classroom have no choice in the matter since the decision is made by the school. That means they must sign up for a Google Account regardless of whether they want one. It's the responsibility of the adults to evaluate the impact of the software they choose. And privacy should be one of the top concerns for anyone evaluating software for educational use in my view.

Google's educational privacy policy [1] is carefully worded to state that they do not mine the content you upload to Google classroom ("Your data is yours"). What they don't state is whether they track the activities of school students and what this actually entails. How is that data aggregated? Who sees that data inside Google? Is the data anonymised? Or is it tied to an individual student?

Given that you must enter a date of birth to create a Google Account, Google is capturing very specific and personal details of thousands, perhaps millions of students. Over time, Google will have amassed a staggering amount of information about the behaviour and activities of these students and will continue to do so into their adult lives (if the students continue to use their Google Account).

If Google isn't tracking the online activities of Google classroom users, why do they not simply state that?

[1] https://www.google.com/edu/privacy.html

Since I volunteer in school science and computer lab, I have observed first hand how schools simply do not have the bandwidth to run any kind of IT. Even something as simple as installing a single new application on all of the lab computers is beyond the teachers of the classroom.

That means most schools pretty much have to adopt some kind of cloud based solution that allows network administration of all of the computers used by the students.

I don't know why Google's privacy policy isn't worded the way you would like, but one reason is probably that wording it in a very strict way prevents any kind of evolution of the software product. For example, if you say "we don't track activities of school students", what does that mean? Does it mean the classroom software can't notify teachers about student behavior problems? Can't show a statistical dashboard for them? That 'auto-suggest' and Google Now-style assistive features (e.g. "You have an upcoming assignment due, and estimates based on your past speed of doing them says you should start today.") can't be offered?

"...if you say "we don't track activities of school students", what does that mean?"

It means whatever Google explains it to mean. Google can either be vague about it, or they can be clear and informative. Google is the one collecting the data. Only they know what is captured and for what purpose. It's their responsibility to explain clearly what they track and record. All of the questions you pose are ones that Google can answer.

I disagree that strict wording prevents the evolution of the software. It might prevent Google from mining user data in order to build a profile of user likes and behaviour. But I consider this type of data capture and analysis to be extend beyond the boundaries of simply improving a piece of software.

Profiling student behavior in the classroom could in fact be used to improve software. Teachers often construct a profile of students. If you go to a parent teacher conference, the teacher will often present you with a dossier of boiled down things your child does well, things they do poorly, and how to improve, and this is often culled from examining classwork and homework.

Giving a teacher a kind of dashboard based on profiling work habits, could be useful for both the teacher and the student.

I think it is better to enumerate what you don't do, rather than enumerate only what you will do.

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