Bram Bout, director of Google’s education unit, pointed to a Google privacy notice listing the categories of information
that the company’s education services collect, like location data and “details of how a user used our service.”
Bout said that student data in Google’s core education services (including Gmail, Calendar
and Docs) “is only used to provide the services themselves, so students can do things like communicate using email.” These services do not show ads, he said, and “do not use personal data resulting from use of these services to target ads.”
Some parents, school administrators and privacy advocates believe that’s not enough.
Bout said of the company’s core education services, “In all cases, the use of these services is
tied to the approval of an administrator who is responsible for overseeing a school’s domain.”
Classroom was the brainchild of Mr. Rochelle, who started Google’s education apps group,
and Zach Yeskel, a Google product manager and former high school math teacher.
In 2012, as part of her effort to become a Google Certified Innovator in education, she said, she came up with the idea
of having Chicago Public Schools hold a free conference — called Googlepalooza — to train teachers on Google’s tools.
Google was already working on offline capabilities, Mr. Casap said, and ultimately modified its education apps so
that students could take their work home on Chromebooks, then upload homework the next day using school Wi-Fi.