GOOGLE EDUCATION:
Schools are ditching Google from all fronts. Up until the pandemic, Google Clasroom
interest was increasing year after year. But, since 2020, interest in Google Classroom has
struggled to even reach levels of 2015. Instead, many schools are opting for third party solutions
like Schoology, Canvas, and Blackboard. It’s not just Google’s virtual classrooms that schools are
ditching either, schools are also ditching Gmail. A quick Google search will bring up dozens of
articles from school newspapers detailing the change. Here’s a few examples. If you look up
the opposite, however, not only do you find fewer results but the results you do find are
often from 2010. And as for the oh so famous chromebooks. These used to be the go to device for
many school districts but more recently schools have started to complain about them. Apparently,
chromebooks have very short life span making them a rather bad investment. This is a very bad sign
not just for Google’s educational business but their office suite as whole. Here’s the thing,
everyday people virtually never pay for Google Drive or Google Docs or Gmail because the free
tier is more than enough for most people. So, much of them money that Google and Microsoft
make from such products come from corporations and schools. Google was never really able to break
into the corporate market with their office suite but it did seem like they were breaking into
the school market. The collaboration features and online nature of Google’s office suite made
it perfect for team projects and presentations. Combine this with the pandemic and you would
think that schools would be paying Google more than ever, and that was the case at the
beginning. When schools didn’t know where to go, they turned to a familiar brand leading to
chromebook sales rocketing by 87% between 2019 and 2020. But, now that schools have had time
to become familiar with Google’s shortcomings and research other solutions, it appears that a
popular choice is to ditch Google and here’s why. MICROSOFT DOMINATES:
To understand why schools are suddenly ditching Google, we first have to take a
look back at why Google became so popular amongst schools in the first place as it was definitely
not because it was the best option. I mean there’s really no comparison between Microsoft Office and
G Suite. Though G Suite had a few unique features like easy collaboration and autosaving onto the
cloud, Microsoft Office was the clear winner. And this is why corporations never really jumped
on board with G Suite. They were looking for the best tools available. Not to mention, people were
already familiar with the Microsoft Office Suite, so going with Microsoft was a no brainer. For
schools, however, the choice wasn’t as clear. Sure, Microsoft was better but what real value
would children especially in elementary school get from Excel or Word. The reality was not much.
I remember, back when I was in kindergarten and 1st grade, our class would go to the computer lab
just to practice typing. As we moved into 4th and 5th grade, we would write and revise our essays
on paper. But, when we were ready for the rough draft, we would switch over to computers. But
that was really the extent of computer use. So, safe to say, Microsoft Office was quite overkill
for most school applications but it wasn’t just Office that was overkill, it was really the whole
computer experience. Most students had no use for a full on Windows machine or Outlook email client.
In fact, this just made students harder to manage. Instead of working on the final draft of an essay,
students would just jump onto Armour Games or Miniclip. So, giving children access to a computer
was often more of a distraction than a tool. Not to mention, Windows and Office were quite
expensive. Schools often had to shell out $100+ to Microsoft alone with each computer. Clearly, what
schools needed was a cheaper watered down version of the whole computer experience. This seems like
the perfect opportunity for Google to step in with the G Suite and that’s what they tried doing in
2006 but it wasn’t as successful as you might think. While Google’s offerings did mesh better
with the needs of schools, it wasn’t something that schools really paid too much attention to.
After all, each school only had 1 or 2 computer labs, so paying a premium for 25 or 50 computers
wasn’t the biggest concern. Not to mention, schools had full control of when they would
incur these costs. They could just stick around with Windows XP and Word 2003 as long as they
wanted. So, in the late 2000s, schools weren’t exactly jumping up and down to switch to Google
but all of this would change with the 2010s. GOOGLE BREAKS IN:
Google’s popularity within the educational space can really be summed up by one trend: schools
aiming for a student to device ratio of 1:1. Suddenly, buying Windows licenses wasn’t just a
matter of purchasing 25 or 50. Elementary schools themselves had to buy several hundred. Middle
schools and high schools had to buy thousands and colleges had to buy tens of thousands. Some
richer schools continued to shell out money for Microsoft licenses but this didn’t last for long
as Microsoft would shoot themselves in the foot. In 2010, Microsoft would introduce a subscription
model for Office called Office 365 and this would eventually become the only option. Really, the
only reason for this move was that a subscription model was more lucrative for Microsoft than a
licensing model. Most corporations would just pony up the cash and jump onto the subscription
model because for professional use, the G Suite wasn’t really a viable option. For schools,
however, Google’s offering started to seem a lot more attractive. Google’s offerings were not only
cheap starting at just $3 per student per year but you could even get it for free if your school
met certain qualifications. Around the same time, Google would also come out with the Chromebook
which was also perfect for schools. Schools didn’t have to worry about kids doing anything too crazy
with Chromebooks because they couldn’t do much to begin with. It turned out that Chromebooks and
the G Suite were the exact watered down versions of computers that schools were looking for.
And before you knew it schools were switching to Google left and right. This isn’t to say
that they ditched Microsoft completely. Schools might’ve still had a few dozen Windows and Office
based computers in computer labs. But, as for the hundreds and thousands of computers that were
being issued to students, these were of course chromebooks. So, when Google launched Classroom
in 2014, it’s no wonder why it became the go to option for most schools. But, this hayday for
Google education only lasted for a few years. By the late 2010s, teachers and students started
noticing quite a few shortcomings. You see, Google Classroom was nothing more than a UI to share and
manage Google Drive documents and presentations. When a student turns in a document, literally the
only thing that’s happening is that the sharing permissions are being changed. The document gets
shared with the teacher’s drive and the student loses editing permissions. That’s pretty much
it. This in itself was a pretty crappy solution because students could no longer edit the document
once it was turned in which didn’t really make sense in a lot of situations. Also, there were
no robust systems for self grading assessments, announcements, gradebooks, online discussions,
or meetings just to name a few. These are all basic features that are available in every other e
learning solution. But, despite the shortcomings, most schools put up with Google throughout
the late 2010s because it was cheap and was mostly sufficient for their needs. But
all of this would change with the pandemic. GOOGLE GETS LEFT BEHIND:
When the pandemic hit, there was a massive influx of schools switching
to chromebooks and Google Classroom because that’s what was popular. But as the pandemic
raged on, schools simply started investing in better solutions and the reasoning isn’t rocket
science. Virtual classrooms were no longer an extension to in person classrooms. For a period
of time, they were a full on replacement to in person classrooms. And even with the shift back
to in person classes, the utilization of these e learning platforms is larger than ever. In
fact, it seems that the in many schools, the in person aspect is now the extension. Nowadays,
every homework, every quiz, every test, and every project is completely online. The instructions are
posted online, the students work together online, and the project is turned in online. Basically
everything other than the teacher’s lecture itself can be found on Canvas or Schoology or whatever
platform the school is using. At universities, even the lectures are automatically recorded and
uploaded onto these platforms. In terms of cost, Canvas does have a free tier, but that’s mostly
for small scale implementations. For example, if you were running a yoga class or a math tutoring
service, you might use the free tier. For district wide and university wide implementations, Canvas
is not free, it’s actually quite expensive. Canvas doesn’t have any sort of set pricing and each
school is handled on a case by case basis. But, here are some of the numbers that are floating
around online. It seems that on average, schools have to pay an upfront fee of several thousand
dollars to setup the initial system plus about $25 per user per month. This could be a higher or
lower depending on what level of integration and branding a given school is looking for but that's
a ball park number. As you can see, that’s several times more than Google’s $3/month and free tiers
but systems like Canvas are also several times more effective than Google’s offerings. And given
how heavily these systems are now utilized at schools, it simply doesn’t make sense to go with
a watered down versions from Google. The same logic applies to chromebooks as well. Students
no longer go to the computer lab once a week to practice typing. They use computers the entire
day at school and after school as well. Also, they’re doing increasingly complicated tasks
as well. Nowadays, students are 3d modeling in engineering classes and coding algorithms in
computer science classes even in middle school. Also, every job in the world uses windows or mac,
so it really doesn’t make sense to train students to use chromebooks. Some districts are even
going as far as purchasing Macbooks and iPads for students. But even those that aren’t going
that far are very much seeing a resurgence in Windows and Office and more professional tools
in general even though they’re more expensive. THE STATE OF GOOGLE:
In the end, it seems that Google’s greatest advantage within the educational space has
also become their greatest weakness. When tech adoption was still relatively early stage
within schools, Google was able to make a big splash by offering tech for extremely cheap
whether that be chromebooks, the G suite, or Google Classroom. While these options had
their shortcomings, when the virtual classroom was simply an addition to in person learning,
they held up alright. But virtual learning is front and center, the whole Google ecosystem
starts to fall apart. We should also mention that school districts are now being run by
a newer generation that better understands tech. They realize that investing in good tech
for students is way more valuable than buying pencils and papers and desks or even building
new buildings. The ROI is simply incomparable. And that’s why schools are giving up on
Google. They’re simply leaning towards more professional solutions that make more sense
in our increasingly tech driven world. Education may not be the only realm in which Google is
losing ground. They may also be losing ground with YouTube with their new adblock policies.
If you wanna know why, check out this video.
