As you may or may not know, part of the GSuite for Education
(CHATclasses.com) is the ability to use Google Chat, which is a
texting option through their CHATclasses.com email. We recently
shut off access to that feature because there were a few students
using it inappropriately. Since then we have heard from many
students asking us to re-enable it again so that they can chat
with their CHAT friends.
What we would like to propose is that we enable Google Chat again
for students, but allow parents to opt out of this service for
their kids if they want to. It should also be noted here that the
capability to use google chats is not unique to a CHATclasses.com
email. ALL regular gmail accounts have the ability to use
google chat, so if you opt out, there's not guarantee that your
student won't sign up for a different gmail address and continue
chatting. It's all about parental monitoring. (o:
One last thing I'd like to share is that because CHATclasses.com
is an educational domain and students are under the age of 18, all
of their chats are stored in a vault, so we do have access to look
up any student's chats if necessary.
Google Chat is now active again for all students. Please let me
know if you want to opt out for your kids.