This got me thinking, as I have many primary-school clients ("K-6" schools) making extensive use of Google Apps for Education to give the students access to various services like gmail, drive, sites, blogger.
So I just did a search, and found the following question and answer on productforums.google.com[1] from 2009...
Question:
We currently have Google Apps Education in our school. Our teachers in the elementary and middle school have expressed a great interest in using Google Docs in the classroom. I read on the web that there is a age restriction of 13. Is there anything in the terms of service that indicates this and what is Google's position on using Google docs in k-5 classrooms.
Answer:
If you are using Google Docs within Google Apps Education Edition for your school domain, your school assumes the responsibility for complying with COPPA and the information that students submit. When offering online services to children under 13, schools must be cognizant of Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). COPPA is a regulation that requires parental consent for the online collection of information about users under 13. Per the Google Apps Education Edition Agreement, any school administering Google Apps Education Edition acknowledges and agrees that it is solely responsible for compliance with COPPA, including, but not limited to, obtaining parental consent concerning collection of students' personal information used in connection with the provisioning and use of the Services by the Customer and End Users.
Parental consent and notification could take place in form of a permission slip granting use of Google Apps and/or other technology services at the school. For more information on complying with COPPA see the FTC's website at www.ftc.gov/coppa.
EDIT:
From [2], google have also said:
Asking for age information helps us provide features like age-appropriate settings to our users, who are interacting more every day with the people they know. Under our policies, Google doesn’t allow users who are under the age of 13 to have Google Accounts, unless they are using Google Apps for Education accounts through their school. This is similar to a lot of online services, as it's very complicated for many providers to offer better solutions for children that meet the relevant regulations.
Comments
This got me thinking, as I have many primary-school clients ("K-6" schools) making extensive use of Google Apps for Education to give the students access to various services like gmail, drive, sites, blogger.
So I just did a search, and found the following question and answer on productforums.google.com[1] from 2009...
Question:
We currently have Google Apps Education in our school. Our teachers in the elementary and middle school have expressed a great interest in using Google Docs in the classroom. I read on the web that there is a age restriction of 13. Is there anything in the terms of service that indicates this and what is Google's position on using Google docs in k-5 classrooms.
Answer:
If you are using Google Docs within Google Apps Education Edition for your school domain, your school assumes the responsibility for complying with COPPA and the information that students submit. When offering online services to children under 13, schools must be cognizant of Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). COPPA is a regulation that requires parental consent for the online collection of information about users under 13. Per the Google Apps Education Edition Agreement, any school administering Google Apps Education Edition acknowledges and agrees that it is solely responsible for compliance with COPPA, including, but not limited to, obtaining parental consent concerning collection of students' personal information used in connection with the provisioning and use of the Services by the Customer and End Users.
Parental consent and notification could take place in form of a permission slip granting use of Google Apps and/or other technology services at the school. For more information on complying with COPPA see the FTC's website at www.ftc.gov/coppa.
EDIT:
From [2], google have also said:
Asking for age information helps us provide features like age-appropriate settings to our users, who are interacting more every day with the people they know. Under our policies, Google doesn’t allow users who are under the age of 13 to have Google Accounts, unless they are using Google Apps for Education accounts through their school. This is similar to a lot of online services, as it's very complicated for many providers to offer better solutions for children that meet the relevant regulations.
[1] http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-educati...
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/hey-google...