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Google Classroom

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Re: Google Classroom

#91

Post by curun1r »

jrells wrote: post #34
FD3SA wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 machin…

I agree too but there are non-technical problems. Educational institutions regularly spend money on software when some CS students could do it better and cheaper over a summer. The people making these decisions are non-technical and risk averse.

> when some CS students could do it better and cheaper over a summer

And then move on, leaving an unmaintained chunk of code that, while possibly better than the third-party software, instantly becomes a liability of unmaintained code. There's a reason why contractors have a bad reputation in the industry for the code they deliver. It's only developers that know they'll have to live with their work for the foreseeable future that put thought and effort into maintainability.

The only way that your "CS students over the summer" plan could work is if the University put a ton of effort into bootstrapping an open source community. Even then, it's doubtful they could create something that would be appealing enough to work on. Academia has a contractor-like reputation for producing code bases that are mostly only intelligible to the sole developer that worked on it.

Personally, I'd put my money on a non-profit third-party organization like Khan Academy to be able to design something that gets traction. They know the space, have world-class engineers and would be able to generate enough PR to start a community around a tool that they open source.

Re: Google Classroom

#92

Post by oscargrouch »

kbenson wrote: post #70
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 gath…

But you are talking about your personal social contract with Google, and looking over this perspective you are right; but in the end you can choose; The problem is when we take that to education, its a collective social contract, intermediated by a third-party, not a personal student choice.

The OP is right to be concerned; once we are ok with intermediation of the social contract; we are no longer in control; we loose power, and even of we dont agree or dont trust the provider of goods or services; we cant do anything to stop them, and thats whats wrong.

Its a small detail, but a very important one!

Dont accept intermediated social contracts anymore, in digital age, we can all have our own private, self-determined social contract, and that can be enforced even on our democracies and fundamental rights

Re: Google Classroom

#93

Post by deelowe »

JackdawX wrote: post #65
jrells wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/

Re: Google Classroom

#94

Post by acbart »

teach wrote: post #52
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. I am in charge of Canvas at our school, and we are deploying Google Apps for Ed. next year. Not thinking of using Classroom at all - at least not with the current feature set.

On the other hand, at my school we ALREADY have a lot of teacher using Google apps with their students. The clever ones have been able to cobble together something decent using gmail, google drive, calendar, etc. Google Classroom streamlines what they were already doing. And it will allow some less-technically-savvy teachers to do some of the same things.

And I think it has a strong sell for just that - It has good features now, I just want MORE features. I'm hoping this is just the start of something bigger.

Re: Google Classroom

#95

Post by r00fus »

josefresco wrote: post #6
smurfysmurf wrote: post #4

A 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.

Another item to take note of is Google's EOL policy for Chromebooks[1]. Assuming the institution depreciates it's assets on a 5-year period, this compares well with, say, a Windows PC/laptop - at the end of the period, the device would have minimal value (as it would no longer get updates). Add in the management fee, and you might favorably offset the cost of having your own WSUS and administrator.

[1] http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/eol.html

Re: Google Classroom

#96

Post by kbenson »

oscargrouch wrote: post #92
kbenson wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gath…

But you are talking about your personal social contract with Google, and looking over this perspective you are right; but in the end you can choose; The problem is when we take that to education, its a collective social contract, intermediated by a third-party, not a personal student choice. The OP is right to be concerned; once we are ok with intermediation of the social contract; we are no longer in control; we loo…

You seem to implying some position of mine towards the larger discussion based on my statement, which wasn't my intent. Whether I trust Google to do what they say and whether I think they are appropriate for the task being discussed, are not necessarily the same thing. There are other factors of importance, as you pointed out.

Re: Google Classroom

#97

Post by shortstuffsushi »

ticviking wrote: post #87
nacho2sweet wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I work at a medium US university and I can say that the thick java stacks and waterfall is a huge part of the sources of headaches in my job. I've got my team quite agile for a Uni development team but we still face lots and lots of problems with FERPA(US student privacy rules), and trying to work with much less agile internal teams. Most of the rest of the local developers are 40-60 and very resistant to any kind of…

Could you or the parent express what you dislike about backends written in Java? I think there tends to be a pretty negative stigma associated with it, but I haven't really seen why. Personally, I've worked with both C# .Net and Java backends, and it's really a horse a piece. Is performance the issue? Security? What is the general dislike of Java about?

Re: Google Classroom

#98

Post by chestnut-tree »

cromwellian wrote: post #80
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…

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

Re: Google Classroom

#99

Post by mathattack »

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…

At my undergrad, the internal IT department was generally folks who couldn't get full time jobs in technology. Many departmental projects were done by students as projects, and were never updated or supported afterward.

Re: Google Classroom

#100

Post by cromwellian »

chestnut-tree wrote: post #98
cromwellian wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 responsibili…

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?

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