Yes, but the problem is that they haven't been solved. I wonder at this point if we can actually solve them. We can't even agree on where to store the waste. It's as if I couldn't get the toilet to work so I just started putting my urine in jars and stacking it in the back yard. Nuclear requires long-term planning and long-term, intensive, near-religious commitment to rigorous safety procedures. And the Japanese, a culture known for loving procedures and rules, couldn't even pull it off. Before I go all pro-nuclear, I want proof that we are grown-up enough to run it.

I really tried to like this. There were some good ideas and plot points, but it felt stilted and clunky. I think the translation was to blame. I didn't like it enough to read the second one.

Unless, of course, we find that team Trump was actively involved in helping the Russians with #3. And Frankly, that wouldn't surprise me, especially with the reports of how the Russian were very talented at targeting the right voters. They could pretty much only get that targeting information from the Trump campaign. I suspect that is what Meuller is really digging for.

I'll bet that if everyone Sanjeev Patni met punched him in the crotch, he would get over the initial pain in a few days and accept the need for such crotch punching.

That is the privacy policy for personal Google accounts. There is a separate legal agreement Google signs with school districts that governs privacy far more strictly. "7.4 Ferpa. The parties acknowledge that (a) Customer Data may include personally identifiable information from education records that are subject to FERPA (“FERPA Records”); and (b) to the extent that Customer Data includes FERPA Records, Google will be considered a “School Official” (as that term is used in FERPA and its implementing regulations) and will comply with FERPA." The "school official" language is very specific as to what information can be shared, and it is very strict.

So when a kid turns in an assignment digitally, are you going to have them hand that flash drive in? Should the teacher get a bag to haul them all back and forth? Digital collaboration is the way people work today.

In this case, the fox has signed a legal contract.

Based on what?

And that advertising company legally agrees in it's contract with the schools not to sell that data. As a parent, if you don't want your student using Google, you are welcome to opt out. But frankly, it seems like paranoia to me.

Thanks for this. I'm in the same boat. We switched several year ago and the impact on collaboration and ease of logins and access to student and teacher work has been so positive. That doesn't even get into tools like Google classroom.

Good points. Our district has been moving into Google for about five years. We are getting to the point now where I have started doing work sessions with Seniors to discuss getting their data out when they graduate. Some of them have a large amount of Docs and other stuff. I'm reworking that curriculum to discuss things like data ownership and trying to give them options like Google Takeout so that they know that the choice to own the data or not is up to them once it is out of our edu domain.

This is entirely true. I've been in educational technology long enough to remember when Apple specifically courted us because they needed us. But when the iPhone blew up, they just didn't need us anymore. They are still cordial, but their basic product design isn't exactly education-friendly anymore and they don't care.

Google very specifically does NOT sell data from it's edu domains.

This. I do tech coaching with teachers in a mid-sized district. We have wireless in all schools. Our network is far more complex and expensive than people think.

It's even better than that. If the school district has a Google for Education domain, you can actually manage the devices through Google's admin console. That means you can not only make sure they are updated, but you can push updates in a staggered fashion or hold updates if you need to. Plus, depending on the model, many of the Chromebooks are very easy to repair. Screens and keyboard are pretty easy to swap out. Our district contracts this out, but if I were in a smaller district, I would be training kids to do hardware work on these things to get some hands-on practice.