Google In Schools

15 minute read | Last updated 13-Jun-2018 |  Privacy

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Bad Robot Transcript

Good morning, everyone. How’s it going today in this episode episode 67 which is crazy enough and hard to believe as it is. I want to talk about an article that came across my feed had this morning on from CBC radio for the spark program. They were looking at the use of G Suite in schools within Canada.

Now this is most provinces have some percentage of deployment of Google. I’m at the predominant and technology used in primary schools within Canada and that speaks, you know, well to the ease of use of the sweet, but also some of the economic behind it and just to lay the groundwork for the spark article and did a really good job about and covering, you know, every which aspect of the issue and the general question was you know, is this a good thing to have G Suite Google so deeply integrated into the mechanisms in the workflows of our schools.

And I touched on some key points that I want to reiterate here because I think it’s a really interesting case study to the economics are clear education is always struggling for funding and they are also struggling for time and for resources. The G Suite proposal is pretty straightforward as pretty attractive.

It is a set of web-based software. So Google docs on Gmail hangout video chat in the number of custom applications for teachers to help manage class work assignments that are all normally delivered through Chromebooks. Now Chromebooks and themselves are really interesting device for educational it because they’re essentially disposable right arm.

You can log-in I can have any student login to any device. I have an ear instantaneously. They’re set up in their own customized work environment. So you got this ability to move the devices among students very easily, which is very attractive and there’s no data that’s locked into a specific device.

So if there is a damaged or a hardware issue and that one can be simply retired and then we could be bra. And while that original ones being fixed or whatever the case may be. So there’s a very easy way to keep things up and running which is critical because it staff are normal at the board level not at the school level.

So everybody sort of winds right and put the challenge here and then you brought up in this park article was Andy Miele user privacy. What about the kids privacy every data mining them are we tracking them early on? Well, yes and no is the answer in this is where the story really gets interesting which is why I wanted to bring it up today.

So first of all, let me get the elephant in the room. There’s a lawyer quoted in the article and I absolutely vehement Lee opposed. This person’s point of view eyewear. Basically on the issue of data being stored in another country. You have to worry about it because that date is not of interest to a National Asset linked to the FBI in the states.

That’s the wrong way to approach privacy privacy is not about hey, I don’t have anything to hide so I shouldn’t have to hide anything privacy is a human right privacy and within an IT world doesn’t mean You need to assume that your date is of interest in there for if it’s not of Interest.

You’re not under threat or and you don’t need to keep your data private. It should be private by default. So let’s get that out of the way private by default and I for Canadians normally that means under Canadian law and that’s where things get challenging with respect to Google is that they can’t guarantee the data will be kept here in Canada, or at least we’re not sure because all of the agreements with the school board them with the ministries of Education are normally under NDA which means the public can’t get at them which is a problem with this issue in general but the real corvus all this stuff, you know, the benefits outweigh a lot of these concerns, but the real Crux of the spark article when I want to talk about in this episode is this idea of informed consent in inform usage and the challenge here is that it’s not at all informed when it comes to school boards.

So every parent is sent home a letter the beginning of the year that basically sums up and says, you know, this is you need to talk to your kids with you. Use of technology and a lot of that comes out of the appropriate use of these G Suite accounts.

So, you know, you won’t be searching for inappropriate things. You won’t behave as if you would in the real world, think the challenge there is that you’re also not aware of the context in which the technology is going to be used as a parent that gets really difficult to have that proper conversation.

But if we take that a step further, we know that school boards are stressful resources training is at a minimum. It’s very difficult G Suite is extremely powerful and you can easily can figure things to be public when they should be private. I’ve seen this personally a number of times with school board zones happening a by accident of course, but the teachers and education staff need to be trained up on this stuff just because you think oh, it’s just Google everybody knows how to use it.

Well that’s part of the impact on the user. So the uses are the students and as the students are minors their parents are being a The consent to the use of this technology with the assumption that it will be used safely and securely but that’s not the case because of the complexity and the lack of training resources.

You can see how this issue starts to really get quick complicated very very quickly and then make that even harder what a lot of Educators don’t realize what a lot of it folks don’t realize what a lot of citizens don’t realize is that while being Google for Education user agreement says that they won’t mind the data accounts that they won’t track the accounts in my name for privacy not every service under the Google Empire falls under that license the big glaring exception Heroes YouTube YouTube does not fall under that license.

So when you’re using YouTube in the in the classroom when you’re betting those in gsuite docks that you still track it may not be Associated directly to a child but it is associated to a certain age group because they know it’s coming from school. And then it’s his whole question of is there a shadow profile setup? So while I’m within Play educational account.

I’m protected by the educational you lie in a certain set of permissions when I go out to non Educational Services. Does that still hold true? Am I still track my tractor? The shadow account is on a track is a random music. There’s a ton of questions here. I don’t have any answers.

I wish I did but it I think this is a glaring and unfortunately, it involves children. So it’s very concerning example of the fact that consented informed usage of technology is extremely difficult privacy is extremely difficult. You can see the economic advantages for the school board’s you can see the upside managing Chromebooks and sort of a random systems for students to login to that’s a great operational Model A really reduce the cost.

Of course, the economic benefits to Google Arts partners of short-term sales of Chromebook long-term users invested at in the ecosystem. So there’s a trade-off like schools. Google gets long-term users on Android. Chromebook manufacturers. I get an outside immediately. So that’s a win-win-win and that’s a good thing. I have been larger question of you know, how do you have that discussion not only with the students but how do you have the discussion in the training with the teachers to ensure that privacy is enabled by default as opposed to just a lip service that’s a really complicated issue and there’s a number of parallels with corporate it with a security in general.

I don’t know what the wrap up here is IR. This is an issue that I’m passionate about. This is an issue that I’m going to dive into deeper. I’ll tweet up the link for the cbc’s park article to put in the comments below. What do you think? How do you think that you know, there’s this question of the specifically Google in education.

There’s a larger question of your complex can send and understanding of configurations for user privacy at Community privacy and child privacy. I have hit me up online at Mark NCAA in the comments down below or of Always by email me at Mark end. I think this one’s really really needs a discussion.

There is one started on LinkedIn and I’ll link up to that as well. It’s complicated. That’s really my semi for today. I hope you guys are set up for a fantastic Wednesday. I look forward to talking to you online and see you on the show tomorrow. Good morning, everyone.

How’s it going today in this episode episode 67 which is crazy enough and hard to believe as it is. I want to talk about an article that came across my feed had this morning on from CBC radio for the spark program. They were looking at the use of G Suite in schools within Canada.

Now this is most provinces have some percentage of deployment of Google. I’m at the predominant and technology used in primary schools within Canada and that speaks, you know, well to the ease of use of the sweet, but also some of the economic behind it and just to lay the groundwork for the spark article and did a really good job about and covering, you know, every which aspect of the issue and the general question was you know, is this a good thing to have G Suite Google so deeply integrated into the mechanisms in the workflows of our schools.

And I touched on some key points that I want to reiterate here because I think it’s a really interesting case study to the economics are clear education is always struggling for funding and they are also struggling for time and for resources. The G Suite proposal is pretty straightforward as pretty attractive.

It is a set of web-based software. So Google docs on Gmail hangout video chat in the number of custom applications for teachers to help manage class work assignments that are all normally delivered through Chromebooks. Now Chromebooks and themselves are really interesting device for educational it because they’re essentially disposable right arm.

You can log-in I can have any student login to any device. I have an ear instantaneously. They’re set up in their own customized work environment. So you got this ability to move the devices among students very easily, which is very attractive and there’s no data that’s locked into a specific device.

So if there is a damaged or a hardware issue and that one can be simply retired and then we could be bra. And while that original ones being fixed or whatever the case may be. So there’s a very easy way to keep things up and running which is critical because it staff are normal at the board level not at the school level.

So everybody sort of winds right and put the challenge here and then you brought up in this park article was Andy Miele user privacy. What about the kids privacy every data mining them are we tracking them early on? Well, yes and no is the answer in this is where the story really gets interesting which is why I wanted to bring it up today.

So first of all, let me get the elephant in the room. There’s a lawyer quoted in the article and I absolutely vehement Lee opposed. This person’s point of view eyewear. Basically on the issue of data being stored in another country. You have to worry about it because that date is not of interest to a National Asset linked to the FBI in the states.

That’s the wrong way to approach privacy privacy is not about hey, I don’t have anything to hide so I shouldn’t have to hide anything privacy is a human right privacy and within an IT world doesn’t mean You need to assume that your date is of interest in there for if it’s not of Interest.

You’re not under threat or and you don’t need to keep your data private. It should be private by default. So let’s get that out of the way private by default and I for Canadians normally that means under Canadian law and that’s where things get challenging with respect to Google is that they can’t guarantee the data will be kept here in Canada, or at least we’re not sure because all of the agreements with the school board them with the ministries of Education are normally under NDA which means the public can’t get at them which is a problem with this issue in general but the real corvus all this stuff, you know, the benefits outweigh a lot of these concerns, but the real Crux of the spark article when I want to talk about in this episode is this idea of informed consent in inform usage and the challenge here is that it’s not at all informed when it comes to school boards.

So every parent is sent home a letter the beginning of the year that basically sums up and says, you know, this is you need to talk to your kids with you. Use of technology and a lot of that comes out of the appropriate use of these G Suite accounts.

So, you know, you won’t be searching for inappropriate things. You won’t behave as if you would in the real world, think the challenge there is that you’re also not aware of the context in which the technology is going to be used as a parent that gets really difficult to have that proper conversation.

But if we take that a step further, we know that school boards are stressful resources training is at a minimum. It’s very difficult G Suite is extremely powerful and you can easily can figure things to be public when they should be private. I’ve seen this personally a number of times with school board zones happening a by accident of course, but the teachers and education staff need to be trained up on this stuff just because you think oh, it’s just Google everybody knows how to use it.

Well that’s part of the impact on the user. So the uses are the students and as the students are minors their parents are being a The consent to the use of this technology with the assumption that it will be used safely and securely but that’s not the case because of the complexity and the lack of training resources.

You can see how this issue starts to really get quick complicated very very quickly and then make that even harder what a lot of Educators don’t realize what a lot of it folks don’t realize what a lot of citizens don’t realize is that while being Google for Education user agreement says that they won’t mind the data accounts that they won’t track the accounts in my name for privacy not every service under the Google Empire falls under that license the big glaring exception Heroes YouTube YouTube does not fall under that license.

So when you’re using YouTube in the in the classroom when you’re betting those in gsuite docks that you still track it may not be Associated directly to a child but it is associated to a certain age group because they know it’s coming from school. And then it’s his whole question of is there a shadow profile setup? So while I’m within Play educational account.

I’m protected by the educational you lie in a certain set of permissions when I go out to non Educational Services. Does that still hold true? Am I still track my tractor? The shadow account is on a track is a random music. There’s a ton of questions here. I don’t have any answers.

I wish I did but it I think this is a glaring and unfortunately, it involves children. So it’s very concerning example of the fact that consented informed usage of technology is extremely difficult privacy is extremely difficult. You can see the economic advantages for the school board’s you can see the upside managing Chromebooks and sort of a random systems for students to login to that’s a great operational Model A really reduce the cost.

Of course, the economic benefits to Google Arts partners of short-term sales of Chromebook long-term users invested at in the ecosystem. So there’s a trade-off like schools. Google gets long-term users on Android. Chromebook manufacturers. I get an outside immediately. So that’s a win-win-win and that’s a good thing. I have been larger question of you know, how do you have that discussion not only with the students but how do you have the discussion in the training with the teachers to ensure that privacy is enabled by default as opposed to just a lip service that’s a really complicated issue and there’s a number of parallels with corporate it with a security in general.

I don’t know what the wrap up here is IR. This is an issue that I’m passionate about. This is an issue that I’m going to dive into deeper. I’ll tweet up the link for the cbc’s park article to put in the comments below. What do you think? How do you think that you know, there’s this question of the specifically Google in education.

There’s a larger question of your complex can send and understanding of configurations for user privacy at Community privacy and child privacy. I have hit me up online at Mark NCAA in the comments down below or of Always by email me at Mark end. I think this one’s really really needs a discussion.

There is one started on LinkedIn and I’ll link up to that as well. It’s complicated. That’s really my semi for today. I hope you guys are set up for a fantastic Wednesday. I look forward to talking to you online and see you on the show tomorrow.