Questions and Answers about Park Student Google Accounts 1. What will the accounts be used for? Students will be using these accounts to share work with their teachers and with each other via email and Google Drive. Students can access their school Google accounts from any Internet-connected computer. The student Gmail address can also be used to sign up for school-related accounts such as Quizlet (for French/Spanish practice), PBWorks, Tinkercad, etc., allowing students to keep their personal email address private. In addition to using the student Google accounts for email, many teachers encourage or even require students to use Google Drive to share and submit work. This allows students to work on documents from any Internet- connected computer without having to worry about where they have saved their work. 2. Why not use my child’s personal email or Gmail account? There are several reasons: a. Part of the 6th grade curriculum in the fall includes teaching students how to use their Google accounts so it is essential for them to all have accounts with the same settings, menus, etc. b. Social networking features such as Google Chat and Google Buzz have been disabled in the Park student Google accounts, which is helpful if you do not want your children to have access to these tools at this time. c. Using a Park student Gmail address allows students to have a “business” address for school-related purposes, keeping their personal addresses more private. d. We have found that in general, Gmail is the most reliable system on our school’s network; other forms of webmail do not always work as well. 3. How do the students set up and access their student Google accounts? They don't! Student accounts are created and managed by Park's network administrator as part of our Google Apps for Education (GAFE) domain. Returning 6th, 7th and 8th grade students have already been assigned student Google accounts. 6th grade students new to Park will be given their login and temporary password information in tech classes; new 7th and 8th grade students will receive this information during orientation. Park provides the accounts for free. 4. What will my child's student Gmail address be? Each student's address consists of her/his first name, last initial (or last two initials for hyphenated names), graduation year, and the suffix @parkschool.net (for example, [email protected]). This eliminates the need to reassign the addresses each year, so students can keep the same address from 6th through 8th grade and even into the Upper School if they so choose. 5. How will my child learn how to use her/his Park student Google account? All 6th grade students will be taught how to use their Park student Google accounts in their technology classes early in the school year. As part of this training, the 6th grade curriculum includes several class periods about creating secure passwords and using email appropriately; this session will cover ethical as well as safety issues. 7th and 8th graders new to Park will be introduced to the Park student Google accounts as part of their orientation before regular classes start. 6. What about parental controls or other ways of protecting students? Currently, we have disabled the chat function for Park student Google accounts. The student Google accounts will have additional spam filtering comparable to what is used for Park faculty email accounts. Students can also create custom filters to automatically delete email from specific addresses or which contain specific words. However, we cannot promise that students will never receive spam or inappropriate messages, nor will we be routinely monitoring and supervising the content of student Gmail accounts (because we can only change passwords or suspend/delete accounts; we cannot view the contents of an account). The best way to keep these Park Google accounts safe and spam-free is for students to use them ONLY for school-related communication. 7. What privacy will the student’s email account be accorded? Because this is a school email account students should not assume that their school email is 100% private—the same assumption that should be made by those of us who use email accounts issued by our employers, or for that matter, ANY email account. However, we assume that students are using their accounts appropriately and we will not investigate the contents of their accounts until we have good reason to believe that they are being misused. In fact, account administrators can only change passwords or suspend/delete accounts; we cannot see the contents unless someone shares an email or document with us.