Education is a growing market in the world of the internet. Globally, it’s worth $4.4 trillion. The U.S. makes up a quarter of that, with the K — 12 market being worth $7.5 Billion alone. A lot of people in Start-Up Land want a slice of that pie. With any luck, the Texas State Board of Education, which has a large and bias-based influence over America’s school text-books, will wither up and die.
Google has been attempting to get a toe-hold into this market. Previously, the company has tried with Apps For Education, a suite of free, web-based education tools that have some 30 million users worldwide and Google For Education, Google’s Chromebook creeping into schools with over 19 percent of that aspect of the market. Now, Google has extended that with Classroom, which seeks to engage parents, teachers, and students alike.
Released to coincide with Teacher Appreciation Day back on May 6, Classroom uses all the basic Google tools like Docs, Drive, and Gmail to make assignment creation and tracking easier. That means no more “My dog ate my homework” excuses. Google has a huge advantage over other startups trying to do the same; there’s an immense built-in existing population of users to get onboard.
So far, Google is keeping Classroom invite-only, with educators invited to sign-up to the preview program for access. The program opens up to the first group of pilot testers sometime around June and Google expects to release it widely by September, in time for the start of the next school year.
For those with privacy concerns, Google also won’t even the data that moves through the platform or display ads in Classroom, in accordance with its new policy announced last week after an attempted class action lawsuit brought about by a group of students. Google For Education’s director, Bram Bout, told the Wall Street Journal that all scanning of Gmail and any collection and use of data from Apps for Education, which includes Google Docs, will cease. Previously, ads weren’t included in education apps, but the company scanned them for information to be used later in other areas to target ads to users. Google also said it’s looking at making similar moves in its apps for business and for government products.
The policy was no doubt brought into effect following Education Week’s reporting that Google crossed a creepy line, monitoring the emails of these students — most of whom were under 18 at the time — who had initially signed up for Apps For Education, to build profiles of its users for the sole aim of targeted advertising.
A Google spokeswoman confirmed to Education Week that the company “scans and indexes” the emails of all Apps for Education users for a variety of purposes, including potential advertising, via automated processes that cannot be turned off—even for Apps for Education customers who elect not to receive ads. The company would not say whether those email scans are used to help build profiles of students or other Apps for Education users, but said the results of its data mining are not used to actually target ads to Apps for Education users unless they choose to receive them.
Education Week speculates that the case could have “major implications” for how the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act [FERPA] is interpreted. FERPA, issued in 1974, ensures the privacy of records of students under the age of 18. The Department of Education’s recent guidance on the issue also appears to indirectly state that Google’s Gmail practices run afoul of FERPA.
See, it’s funny because Bing conflates Google with being screwed.
Microsoft has also criticized Google’s Gmail practices in its Scroogled campaign, contrasting Google’s data mining with Microsoft’s Outlook, which doesn’t use email data to serve users ads.
Increasing available technology in the classroom and widening its capabilities is always a good thing. Hopefully, Google has learned its lesson when it comes to leaving data mining out of this more noble pursuit.
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