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Google Classroom

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Re: Google Classroom

#61

Post by Balgair »

sagischwarz wrote: post #14

I 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…

Not a lawyer, but the Google privacy policy does seem very nice to the student here: http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/#nosharing

This is to contrast it with the privacy policy of other systems like Canvas: http://www.canvaslms.com/policies/privacy-policy

Selected out of context quote from the Terms of Use: "You warrant that the holder of any worldwide intellectual property right, including MORAL rights, in Your Content, has completely and effectively waived all such rights and validly and irrevocably granted to you the right to grant the license stated above." Caps to add emphasis.

Re: Google Classroom

#62

Post by VLM »

raldi wrote: post #44
jestinjoy1 wrote: post #38

What I dislike about Google Classroom is students need institution email address for logging in.

Why does that bother you?

I will post for my kids who suffer under the same restriction, that it's yet another email address they don't/won't use, but the admin types will only use it for CYA purposes. So risk adverse administrator sends email to the unused address that its "dress like a hippie day" on thursday and 99% of the students don't check an unused addrs so they never know.

"Obviously" they just need an email forward feature, but of course that would require admin effort for the kids that screw it up or intentionally create mail loops or mess with another kids account, so for CYA reasons that can't be done.

So the net effect is we've gone from a modest amount of paper correspondence to no correspondence at all because the tech doesn't work and nobody is interested enough in the message to fix it.

Another problem is for privacy reasons each kids email looks like "a java GUID"@something.k12.edu and nobody wants to use an address or username like that. ts impossible to remember their email addrs or passwords (they're written down on stickers on their devices) but I think it would be funny if its not "a java GUID" but actually their SS numbers run thru md5 or something even dumber from a security perspective.

As an adult, I have an email address like that from my cable company. I don't even know what my cable company email addrs is, much less its password. I've never used it and never will. God only knows how much marketing spam the cable co has sent to it. Maybe electronic bills too, who knows.

Re: Google Classroom

#63

Post by yeukhon »

nacho2sweet wrote: post #55
sagischwarz wrote: post #14

I 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…

I work in IT at a major Canadian University. I hear what you are saying, but the solutions provided by universities IT departments are usually sub-par to completely not useful. There have been attempts in the past to partner with other schools and develop solutions jointly but are often cost over run disasters. It is really hard to attract any top development talent, or even try and convince current employees to stay…

> We have laws that protects students data and doesn't allow us to host student or even employee information on U.S. servers. Provincial laws and mandates handed down from deans because of the Homeland Security Act hinder the use of any sort of SaaS's. Well there is openstack which you can roll your own IaaS after a lot of serious effort. Where I studied in the past would use VMWare heavily to deploy hundreds of OS install. The only reason (people I spoke to since I was sort of involved in that) they couldn't do it was they did not have the incentive to do it. Learning a new technology (rolling OpenStack is not that simple, actually) is very very time-consuming and without the welcome from the top, most people won't even bother to try different technology.

Re: Google Classroom

#64

Post by stephenr »

ceras wrote: post #45
stephenr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of or used this Blackboard software that keeps being referenced, but I find it hard to believe that Google entering nay market is "good news" for anyone except Google fanboys. Google has an atrocious history of entering a market with commercial and open source options, obliterating them all with "hosted, free" solutions, feeding all the new data into their already massive profile building infrastru…

Do you have an example of that sequence happening (other than Google Reader)?

I use as few of Google's services as possible so I don't have a list of the top of my head no, but the extensive list[1] of products they've shutdown should give you a hint. One article[2] I found has analysis of service shutdowns and states that 1 in 3 things Google buys or creates gets shutdown.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discont...

[2] http://bgr.com/2013/05/07/google-services-shut-down-study/

Re: Google Classroom

#65

Post by JackdawX »

jrells wrote: post #40
yincrash wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc .

My University uses Moodle, which is also TERRIBLE. I do all my grades and such in Google Docs, since Moodle is a UX nightmare. Something as simple as entering grades in Moodle requires a lot of clicking around for each grade. We have multi-page documents describing how to perform even the most basic tasks, they require constantly clicking and going to new pages of indiscernible icons. Menus are impossible to navigate…

> I do all my grades and such in Google Docs

You upload all your students grade information to an external private company? Which university do you work for where this is allowed?

Re: Google Classroom

#66

Post by baldfat »

jrells wrote: post #40
yincrash wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc .

My University uses Moodle, which is also TERRIBLE. I do all my grades and such in Google Docs, since Moodle is a UX nightmare. Something as simple as entering grades in Moodle requires a lot of clicking around for each grade. We have multi-page documents describing how to perform even the most basic tasks, they require constantly clicking and going to new pages of indiscernible icons. Menus are impossible to navigate…

It is totally allowed BY having a separate ID system. If no one can ID the student then no one would gain the information.

Re: Google Classroom

#67

Post by bduerst »

jrells wrote: post #40
yincrash wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc .

My University uses Moodle, which is also TERRIBLE. I do all my grades and such in Google Docs, since Moodle is a UX nightmare. Something as simple as entering grades in Moodle requires a lot of clicking around for each grade. We have multi-page documents describing how to perform even the most basic tasks, they require constantly clicking and going to new pages of indiscernible icons. Menus are impossible to navigate…

Moodle is such a terrible thing to happen to the education ecosystem.

It's free/open sourced, meaning that every education system with a budget finds it appealing. Once implemented though, the organization will need to spend buckets of money to design, roll out, and maintain Moodle.

What you end up with is organizations installing Moodle, rather than some higher quality, equal-cost education software they should have installed from the beginning.

Re: Google Classroom

#68

Post by SwellJoe »

wooyi wrote: post #9
donw wrote: post #2

If this is a Blackboard competitor, that's good news. Google definitely has the bankroll and patent magazine to go toe-to-toe with them, which could open up a lot of options in the higher education space.

I doubt it. Blackboard is a full blown Learning Management System (LMS). This looks more like an Edmodo competitor -> pretty much like a Hangouts for Classrooms.

Given the hatred students and many teachers have for Blackboard, it may not need to do as much, if it provides ways to work without a "Learning Management System". Occasionally, the "system" approach gets ousted by something simpler, more general, and more transparent. I'm thinking of Novell's old integrated systems for managing print/file/document sharing, email, accounts, etc., which became less important and integrated into operating systems and supplanted by web-based sharing. So many institutions relied on Novell for that stuff, and then...eventually there were none left.

Re: Google Classroom

#69

Post by gerbal »

freshflowers wrote: post #60

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…

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.

Re: Google Classroom

#70

Post by kbenson »

sagischwarz wrote: post #14

I 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…

Non-trustworthy seems a fairly harsh assessment. I've not seen evidence to ever make me think Google isn't trustworthy. I may not be happy with what they do with my data, but it's not like they've somehow broken their promise to me in any way, we have an understanding. I get use of their services, they get information about me.

Why the distinction is important is because if they stated publicly that they weren't gathering a specific type of data (and I felt they weren't legally compelled to lie by a government), I would trust that statement.

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