I hope parents of current students are monitoring this

Google and other advertisers, as well as school authorities, are using kids’ take home computers to monitor and record their online activities.

Last year almost 20 percent of all K-12 students were required to use Google Chromebooks, and more than 30 million students, teachers, and administrators used Google’s G Suite for Education. The inexpensive laptop and powerful software have become a very cost-effective solution for schools to teach computer and other skills and to communicate with the students and parents. Kids can submit their homework, take tests. check grades, and collaborate with others using these Google products.

According to an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report, these Google products also provide an opportunity for Google, the schools, and other software makers to collect students’ personal data. Essentially the products are Trojan horses used by Google to boost their advertising business.

EFF found that many schools don’t provide a written disclosure about data collection or pay much attention to the terms of privacy, and most don’t offer an alternative for the students to opt out. What that means is that students have even less protection than adults do from Google, and Google has taken advantage of the laxity, building profiles and dossiers on the students, and using them for advertising, market research, and other purposes

In numerous lawsuits, Google has admitted to doing this, including scanning and indexing student email messages and directing advertising to YouTube users under 13 years of age.

Google also acknowledged that it collects a wide range of personal information from student users who log in through its educational software. But it’s not only Google. In its survey EFF found other software companies are also collecting students' personal data when students use their products.

Google, which once used the motto, since dropped, of “Do No Evil”, is currently working closely with the Chinese communists to censor internet searches and monitor all that country’s citizens. It’s apparently doing the same thing here, but has chosen to start with our newest generation, presumably to get them used to the process. Has it infected our own school system? I don’t know the answer to that, but our BOE should investigate, as should the parents of any children with a Chrome Book that’s in any way linked to the child’s school.