The Junta de Andalucía renews at SIMO the agreement with Google and Microsoft for access to educational services in the cloud

In this way, emphasized the advisor, both teachers and students will be able to continue to access for free to the services of video conferenceof file storage and collaborative work, among others, which “undoubtedly contribute to improving teaching and learning processes”.

More precisely, in agreement with Google for Education platform included Google Workspace as a cloud technology solution intended for use in educational centers, the ministry being one of the largest in Europe. Since its launch in 2020, 149,545 teachers and administrative staff and more than 1,200,000 students from 3,439 educational centers have already used this platform to work both inside and outside the classroom.

Thus, from their accounts, they can access different services of the platform, such as Class, To drive, Gmail, Documents, leavespresentations, meetamong others. In addition, they have storage space in the 1.33 Petabyte cloud for storing documentary files, presentations and multimedia elements related to electronic education.

In her intervention, María del Carmen Castillo highlighted that the use of Classroom as an educational support platform is one of the most outstanding aspects of this system, allowing teachers to electronically assign and plan educational tasks and activities . More than 400,000 users They use this tool on a daily basis to organize their educational work.

Another important point, the advisor emphasized, is the centralized management of devices with an operating system. Chrome OS (known as Chromebooks). Currently, 97,652 Chromebooks are centrally managed through a single Google management console, and “with new acquisitions underway, this number is expected to soon reach 120,000 devices.” This centralized management makes it easy to install applications, manage user permissions and update the operating system.

For its part, upon renewal of the agreement with Microsoft, the platform will continue to be available Microsoft 365. After four years of developing the agreement, it covers 914 educational centers, representing approximately 95,900 teaching and administrative staff accounts and nearly 553,000 students. Additionally, they use 27.35 TB of storage.

The advisor explained that these agreements, which are the result of public-private collaboration and the collaborative work of the Ministry’s teams with those of the Google and Microsoft, complete the Ministry’s educational platform, Moodle Centros, which aims to expand the options available to Andalusian teachers for the development of their educational work.

Security and Privacy

Regarding the processing of personal data derived from the use of these services, the advisor explained that it complies with current regulations and reflects the Ministry’s commitment to confidentiality and data protection of students and teachers Andalusian.

The signed agreements guarantee that, in the services provided through this business profile, Google and Microsoft only use the data stored and shared for the provision of the service itself, specifying that the data controller is the Department of Educational Development and Professional Training. The agreements also do not allow the use of data for profiling or advertising purposes; and the storage capacity, or space, is unlimited.

The agreements, which will last two years, are part of the Andalusian Digital Education Strategy, an action with which the ministry seeks to facilitate the educational digital skills in educational centers, make available to the educational community a set of tools, resources and services grouped into different areas of action, among which stand out: virtual classes; digital educational resources, communication and collaboration tools, educational applications (their development and improvement), training of teachers in digital educational skills, support, stimulation and advice, participation of families and acquisition of technological devices to combat the digital divide.

In this sense, 4,200 centers have prepared their Digital Action Plan and more than 80,000 Andalusian teachers currently have a certain level of accreditation of their digital skills, allowing technology to become an appropriate and safe tool for learning and knowledge.