Classroom is something that competes directly with Hapara's [1] Teacher Dashboard product that they charge at $4/student
[1] hapara.com/products/#teacher-dashboard
Google Classroom
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Re: Google Classroom
#12A good way to push the chromebook
Speaking of... I saw this on the Chromebook page "Chromebooks start at just $249 with a $30 management fee per device." Does Apple or other vendors charge a similar "management fee" to this? Unless I'm missing something, the fees will surpass the per-unit pricing before the first year.
in windows world you pay for the servers, exchange, cals for both and on top whatever price for office we haven't even got to hardware yet Chromebooks are cheap.
Re: Google Classroom
#13My university has GApps, and also it has a longstanding Moodle platform. Moodle is awful. It's much better than it used to be, but it's still clunky and ugly. If this is Google's solution, I'd like to see it take off. It'd be easy to integrate and switch from Moodle.
I'm also not a big fan of Moodle, but it does have the advantage of being self-hosted and open-source. Moving student data to a cloud provider adds a bunch of legal complexity, at least here (Denmark). I can use anything I want for non-student data, such as syllabi, assignments, notes, lecture slides, and the like. But I don't think I could have students submit formal, graded assignments through a Google cloud product, or put the actual grades there. Relying on a third-party service would also probably be ruled out unless it comes with some kind of deprecation guarantee (e.g. we're guaranteed at least one academic year lead-time for notification of major changes, discontinuation, or fees).
We do use MS Office 365 for email and calendaring, but I believe they (Microsoft) got some sort of stamp of approval from the education ministry first, and it does come with a long-term service agreement (it isn't free, though).
Re: Google Classroom
#14I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers.
Maybe my view is too German, but I think of education as an sovereign function of the state, where everything (theoretically) can be controlled by the citizens (yes, I know that this is some kind of optimistic). We should teach kids to think critical about centralization of data and knowledge and show them how to manage their digital lives with free and open tools which respect the users rights.
Re: Google Classroom
#15I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers. Maybe my view is too German, b…
Cannot agree more with this. Open source software is a perfect fit with public institutions. I don't understand why any government uses proprietary platforms. It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever. Developers aren't that expensive compared to software licenses for thousands of machines.
As I understand, Germany and many European countries are heading in this direction.
Re: Google Classroom
#16If I was a teacher, there's no way I would use this... privacy concerns aside, there's nothing to suggest that Google won't suddenly shut it down in two or three years when whoever is maintaining it gets bored of it, like Google has with so many other projects.
Re: Google Classroom
#17Is this like coursera?
Re: Google Classroom
#18People should go to a proper Uni, end of story. Anyone not getting a masters or PhD is not worth hiring, because they just lack brainpower and skills to compete on hard problems.
Re: Google Classroom
#19I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers. Maybe my view is too German, b…
Many Universities already use stuff like Blackboard[1] which for the most part is TERRIBLE (at least how I remember it in school.) These pieces of software are already around, and if anything competition in the space will hopefully make things better.
Re: Google Classroom
#20If I was a teacher, there's no way I would use this... privacy concerns aside, there's nothing to suggest that Google won't suddenly shut it down in two or three years when whoever is maintaining it gets bored of it, like Google has with so many other projects.
This concern would not make a whole lot of sense for teachers. The matter of fact is that the stability and longevity of this service is far more certain than the typical length of LMS contracts in school districts or the length of time that certain online educational platforms manage to stay relevant with current technologies.