
Google Classroom - diegolo
https://www.google.com/edu/classroom/
======
sagischwarz
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, 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.

~~~
nacho2sweet
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 up to date with current trends. Lots of
development teams are stuck in old waterfall mentalities on huge java stacks.

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. It makes it really hard and disheartening to provide and
develop good solutions.

I can't suggest someone go use certain survey tools, or use mailchimp to
handle a small campaign for example. I am not supposed to promote the use of
Google Drive or Dropbox for day to day use with other staff because of fear
they will start storing data they aren't supposed to on it. We often end up
with sub-par self hosted copies of great applications, but no one wants to use
them. Google classroom looks really cool but there is no way any schools in
this province would be allowed to use it.

~~~
ticviking
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 change. (seriously using .net
instead of java was hugely controversial)

~~~
shortstuffsushi
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?

~~~
nacho2sweet
I was just saying it off the cuff as sort of a comment on giant waterfall
departments that never create anything great or effective. I don't really have
any hate for Java and there is a lot of great software created with it (J2EE
was my intro to IS development), just the kind of culture and staff it
attracts in this sector. Everyone is in their cubical doing java never
innovating anything with no care in the world to ever break out of the status-
quo. When they do hire new staff it is usually someone who has been doing that
Java at banks or for the government, for 5-8 years and it just continues. Then
these people move up into the more senior positions and help cement the
culture. Being on more of the web-side it is just frustrating.

~~~
ticviking
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with this explanation though.

~~~
shortstuffsushi
You both raise fair points. I do think the community is typically construed
that way, and it's probably accurate to say that a lot of the older Waterfall
devs would be a part of that community (or C/C++).

------
infinitebattery
Senior at the International Academy here (a public high school in Michigan).
One of my classes uses Google Classroom.

I think that Google truly took a "Google Plus" look and morphed that into a
website for teachers. I love how it has a clean and easy to use UI. The
assignments are on a side bar, announcements are clearly displayed in a
"stream". You can easily post a message to your class, and you have access to
everyone's email (making it easy to communicate).

Teachers in my school have used three platforms. Moodle, Google Classroom, and
Edmodo. Quite frankly, I have come to like Edmodo much more. They're identical
to Facebook, but the layout is so much better than the alternatives (in my
preference). Edmodo has truly thought everything out.

------
Diederich
Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View has switched over to this, we love
it. The amount of parent/student/teacher collaboration and transparency is
unparalleled.

BTW: they're not using Chrome Books, but some kind of fancy HP Android
tablets.

~~~
seanc
Having experience with it, how do the parents connect in? Our board uses Apps
for Education, but I don't have a parent account.

I suppose I could get in the game by using my child's account, but often it is
helpful to interact directly with teachers.

------
mikeleeorg
If you are not a teacher or student actively using Google Classroom, you
should pay attention to the comments from teachers and students here. Or go
talk to a local teacher for their impression.

I've been doing that and the general response is overwhelmingly positive.
Others have already stated why. I would like to amplify those sentiments:

\+ Many alternative solutions on the market are generally considered to be
sub-par, such as Moodle, Blackboard, etc. (I personally love the open source
concept behind Moodle and have high hopes for them, but their implementation
is oudated; fortunately, they know this and are working on it.)

\+ Home-grown solutions are generally very poor for all kinds of reasons,
including inability to find technical talent, bureaucracy and mismanagement,
lack of budget, lack of project management, etc.

\+ Google has a strong positive brand with teachers. While privacy concerns
are growing, the overall community doesn't have the same stigma with Google
that many readers of HN have. Google Apps for Education (GAFE) already had a
decent footprint within schools and Google Classroom is piggybacking off of
that penetration.

With that said, concerns about privacy, being operated by a separate for-
profit, and comprehensiveness of features are great points and present ample
opportunities for aspiring competitors. In some ways, Google Classroom just
stepped up the game. If this causes anyone to release even better software for
teachers and students, that's a great thing for teachers and students.

------
donw
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.

~~~
wooyi
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.

~~~
SwellJoe
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.

------
zyxley
If 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.

~~~
wsxcde
Why would a teacher worry about something that might happen 3 years down the
line? You only need this to work for a particular term or semester.

~~~
sosuke
Because learning new products each semester or term is a PITA? Just imagine
how long books last in a curriculum, there is nothing that iterates quickly in
education. A question though is do all teachers use the same software in a
school or is it all ad-hoc?

~~~
wsxcde
It's not really new products very semester, is it? We're talking about an
unlikely event that might happen sometime in future after a few years.

A lot of professors have adopted Piazza is a relatively short time because it
offers real benefits. And you could make the exact same argument about the
longevity of Piazza.

I think we ought to applaud anything that makes life easier for educators
because the reality is that most academic software, or at least blackboard
which seems to terribly popular and is what I've used extensively, is a
terrible mess. I'm not dismissing the concerns about privacy and longevity but
they seem to putting potential future problems ahead of real present benefits.

------
owenversteeg
I have a younger brother in high school that has to use Google
Classroom/Chromebooks/Google whatnot. Ask him anything through me.

What I've heard so far:

\- It sometimes acts weirdly

\- When it emails an assignment, the full text of the assignment is put in the
title, resulting in comically massive titles.

\- Using it at the same time as a personal gmail account is strange/not fun

\- It doesn't have as many features as Edmodo (what the school was using
before)

------
acbart
I got into the demo over the summer, and I was pretty underwhelmed. They list
the features on the front page there, and that's exactly what they have. So in
other words, you can manage a feed of assignments ("X is due on Tuesday",
"Here is a link to a video!") and some very simplistic google docs control. I
really expected something on the level of Canvas or Moodle, but it's clearly
just a few convenience features for running GAfE.

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
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.

~~~
teach
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.

~~~
acbart
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.

------
jrells
As much as I would love for educational institutions (and government in
general) to fund open source projects to solve their needs, that doesn't seem
very realistic right now. Maybe when startup culture becomes the norm. The
people who make decisions about technology purchases in education are, in my
experience, non-technical and highly risk averse. They pay absurd prices for
outdated software. There is little pressure to create a better product. I have
to use Moodle for my teaching, and I'm sure anything Google creates will be
far superior. This was at the top of my startup ideas list, but I'm glad
someone is working on it.

~~~
gerbal
The problem with open source software in academia and education is the price.
The cost of hiring a developer to maintain and support a piece of software is
more often than not far more than the cost of a software license from a
company that provides decent quality support and customer service.

------
cviedmai
I never quite understood why everybody thinks storage should be in the local
server and cannot be provided by a private company.

IMHO, storage is a commodity.

Would you argue that schools need their own power generators because otherwise
they'll be submitted to private companies? Should schools also have their own
satellites and internet connections?

If the data is sensitive why not just encrypting it when is stored the same
way we do when we need to transmit something over the wire?

Now, from the school POV I think if they go for a private solution they should
demand open standards (avoid being locked in) and appropriate SLAs.

~~~
dkarapetyan
Because if all the computation is still happening on the remote server then
that remote server has access to whatever encryption key was used. That
defeats the whole purpose of what you're suggesting. Which means you have to
shuttle the encrypted data to some private server, decrypt it, and then
operate on it which means you might as well just host it locally. The only way
this works is if we get practical homomorphic encryption at which point
storage truly becomes a commodity and that's when Google loses all interest in
hosting that data.

------
greyskull
My 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.

~~~
mjn
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).

------
Grazester
Damn it Google. Over the summer I approached the government of my country to
build a simple learning management system since they were about to start using
tablets at the secondary schools here. Nothing has been finalised yet but I
have a working model.

If they go with what I am working on for them they would be able to run
analytics across all secondary schools and they would own their data.

~~~
judk
Send a resume to Google.

That's life in business.

~~~
Grazester
Funny. When I lived in the U.S. I was called by a Google recruiter.

I don't see Google besting me here where it comes to the tailored needs.

------
pdevr
If you want to use open source software for this, Google has released Course
Builder[1] a while back. Caveat: It uses App Engine, as far as I know.

[1] [https://code.google.com/p/course-
builder/](https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/)

------
gricha2380
Personally I'd love to have this as a part of my normal Google Apps. It would
be a neat way to create tutorials and documentation for my teammates.

------
vfgf
Does it require Google Account for each student?

What if student doesn't want account, and doesn't agree with Google Terms of
Service?

~~~
boydjd
Of course it does.

It also requires the institution to have a Google Apps for Education account,
which usually means that the University email accounts are all Google Accounts
anyways.

------
freshflowers
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.)

~~~
cromwellian
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.

~~~
chestnut-tree
_" 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](https://www.google.com/edu/privacy.html)

~~~
cromwellian
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?

~~~
chestnut-tree
_"...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.

~~~
cromwellian
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.

------
jestinjoy1
What I dislike about Google Classroom is students need institution email
address for logging in.

~~~
raldi
Why does that bother you?

~~~
VLM
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.

~~~
raldi
If the student account _does_ support forwarding, would that put to rest all
of your concerns?

I think it's a false comparison to say it's like your cable address; a school
has a multitude of good reasons for wanting to send email to its students. A
cable company has mostly terrible reasons.

------
EGreg
Usually it goes like this:

In-house solutions -> Centralized commercial offering -> Open source installed
on premises

------
cognivore
Well, I can't even take it seriously, because I fully suspect that 3 to 5
years down the road Google loses interest in the product and decides to drop
it. Then all the investment the schools and teachers have made is lost.

If Google didn't have a habit of killing their own products I'd maybe take the
time to actually think about their products.

------
smurfysmurf
A good way to push the chromebook

~~~
josefresco
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.

~~~
ben1040
It's a one-time fee to enroll the device in their MDM service, not an ongoing
charge.

~~~
josefresco
It appears you are correct, but it seems it was a change from early pricing
models:

"It's a big change from the pricing model Google offered with Chrome OS in the
past: The first generation of Chromebooks came with monthly fees for business
and school accounts -- $28 a month per device for businesses and $20 a month
for schools. With the new plan, organizations pay only the single flat fee for
the lifetime of each device. "

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2471845/cloud-
computing...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2471845/cloud-
computing/google-s-chrome-os--the-dirty-little-secret-about-those-new-
devices.html)

------
ap22213
How does this get around the US FERPA and COPPA regulations?

------
MattWard
this looks awesome.

------
brayan123
play

------
Hengjie
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

------
giardini
Why tie yourself to the current state of technology (keyboard, pc, printer),
which may be defunct in 8-15 years?

Let the kids learn to use computers but limit it specifically to that. In the
classroom emphasis should be on teaching the subject (and let them use pencil,
pen and paper).

And I'm appalled that public schools now teach computer skills but have
abandoned cursive writing.

~~~
seanflyon
Why should schools spend time on cursive? Does it add value for the students?
The last time I used cursive for something other than a signature was in
elementary school.

~~~
Curmudgel
Cursive handwriting, when done with proper technique, is faster than block and
does not cause hand cramps or wrist pain.

~~~
seanflyon
And still much slower than typing. I see insufficient value to learn cursive
in a modern society.

~~~
Curmudgel
Yes, typing is usually faster than cursive. However, most keyboards are not
ergonomic and years of use at high speeds will most likely lead to RSI or at
least sore wrists. And there are still be plenty of times in life where
writing something by hand is more appropriate than typing it up.

~~~
seanflyon
You only get RSI if you type vastly more than you could write by hand. As for
the times when typing is inappropriate, those are relatively short notes for
which cursive is unnecessary. So far in my life I have come across 0
legitimate uses for cursive.

