G Suite for Education
Mount Erin College are using G Suite For Education to support learning and teaching. This page provides information about using G Suite for Education and advice in relation to its safe and responsible use.
Information For Parents
What information needs to be collected?
- Name, year level, home group and school.
- Student’s MEC username and password.
- Location information and preferred language.
Why is this information needed?
- To control access to the online services.
- To prevent unauthorised access to the student’s work.
When could this information be accessed by others?
- By support staff to fix issues.
- Where required by law.
- Never for advertising or marketing purposes.
G suite for education is an internet based service provided by Google for classroom activities. It provides students with access to online education services such as: Classroom, Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Vault, Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, Sites & Hangouts.
The online services offered by Google may be updated from time to time, but are only made available to students once they have been reviewed and approved by the Department of Education and Training (DET).
What are the benefits of this service for students?
- Teaches students to be ‘digital citizens’ through the use of an online system.
- Provides access to digital tools for a range of classroom activities.
- Allows students to actively collaborate with their class on school work.
- Provides digital whiteboard capability in group discussions.
- Enables students to access their classwork from different channels (i.e. laptops, iPads and smartphones).
- Helps students to build working relationships with each other.
- Promotes knowledge sharing.
What information might students store in G Suite for Education?
- In addition to the information needed to provide access to G Suite for Education (student’s username, password, name, year level, home group, school, location information and preferred language), student’s schoolwork will also be stored in G Suite for Education.
- Students have the ability to store and share any school work related content on the platform, such as photographs, audio, video recordings. They can also add non-classroom related information.
- Student’s data is stored in data centers located in the USA, Chile, Taiwan, Singapore, Ireland, Netherlands, Finland and Belgium
How can you help protect your student’s information?
Whilst your school provides your student’s Department username and password to Google to enable them to only access their own information on G Suite for Education, there are some things that you can do to help keep their information safe.
Remind them not to share passwords with anyone, as they cannot be sure how secure another person will be with their details.
Teachers will remind students to only use G Suite for Education for activities related to schoolwork.
Talk about appropriate uses of technology at school and at home. Remind them that anything uploaded to G Suite for Education can be viewed by teachers.
In rare cases, Google’s technical support team may have access to information stored in G Suite for Education.
Please note that Google will never contact you or your child directly. If you or your child are contacted by anyone claiming to be Google support, contact your school immediately.
- Example information students can safely put online:
- Class presentations.
- School classwork/assignments
- Conversations about classwork/assignments.
- School related contact details.
- Class related media – i.e. videos, photos.
- Whiteboard notes.
- Emails between students on school work.
- Example information students should NOT put online:
- Personal mobile or home phone number.
- Personal photos and video clips unrelated to school.
- Other student’s private information.
- Health information.
- Bank details.
- Home address.
- Information on racial or ethnic origin.
Below is the link to access the Google Apps Privacy Policy Opt-Out Form. This form only needs to be completed if you don’t want your child to take advantage of Google Apps.
