We have had some requests to keep Google Chat open for 6-12 students however, after pulling some data we are very concerned about the types of conversations students are having. While chats are archived for ediscovery purposes they are not part of our human monitoring(Gaggle).
Therefore, we want to encourage teachers to begin to transition to Classroom Relay personalized messages rather than using Google chat in hopes that we can turn chat off at the end of the year for High School and March 15 for Middle School, it is already off for Elementary. We are not seeing educational value.
Remember if your teachers aren't familiar with Relay here is the training and quiz.
Please share with teachers using chat (and students if you have opportunity) that digital citizenship conversations are needed around this tool.
Thank you for your understanding.