Terms of Service & Privacy Policy

edCode.org is a community of teachers and developers creating free, open-source tools for education, primarily on the Google Apps platform.

Student and User Privacy

We take seriously our obligation to protect the privacy of student records under the Family Educational Records and Privacy Act (FERPA).

As such, we make the following commitments to users of our publicly-available tools:

While we do use methods to record usage analytics on our tools for quality-improvement purposes, no personally identifiable data will be collected in our usage analytics. In other words, we collect only anonymous usage statistics, which may include the geographic location and demographics as reported by Google Analytics, but which does not include personally identifiable information.
While our scripts and Add-ons frequently request permission to access the full contents of users’ Google Drive, this is generally because the Apps Script development framework offers us no workable alternative of more limited scope. These access rights are required to allow actions performed by the end user, and in no case are the textual contents of users’ Drive files transmitted to any 3rd party services outside of the user’s direct control or knowledge. Other than the case of creating new files for the user in their Drive (such as for shareable reports or print-outs), our tools only access the file from which the script or Add-on is launched.
edCode.org makes no claim to the intellectual property of the users of our tools.

Limitations of our Obligations, and Support

At this point in time edCode.org is committed to offering its tools at no cost to educators, however we assume no legal responsibility for their misuse by end users, nor do we make any guarantees of their quality or reliability. Because we store no student data outside of the end-user’s Google Drive account, the potential failure of our tools generally poses no privacy risk, but we cannot offer a 100% guarantee of this.

While we make every effort to ensure their functionality, the tools we develop exist within a fast-moving product ecosystem in which things break and may need to be fixed from time to time. We enthusiastically welcome all users of our tools as partners in their development and refinement, but we ask that you engage with us with the following norms when seeking our support:

Do not expect to get free consulting services on how to use our tools. We are a community-based organization of volunteers. Please do not ask for us to consult beyond the time required to troubleshoot something that is not functioning as expected unless you are proposing to pay us for this time.
Research (Google search) and do your best to solve your problems yourself prior to asking us. Checkout tool discussion forums and help pages, such as the Flubaroo Discussion Forum and Help Center, before asking us.
When you report an issue, please be respectful of our time and avoid, as much as possible, being vague in your report. Be as specific as possible, including steps you took, screenshots, and relevant error messages. Also consider sharing your spreadsheet with flubarooshare@edcode.org (Edit access) so we can take a closer look directly, should your school’s privacy policies allow. You can also share a copy of the spreadsheet in which you’ve obfuscated student names or other identifying information, but leave all other data intact so we can investigate the issue you’re having.
For questions specifically related to these terms of use, please email dave@edcode.org with the words “Terms of Service” in the subject line.

Attribution

We are thrilled by the interest and evangelism that many of our free tools have generated. If you are blogging about, or offering paid or unpaid consultancy or presentation services that explicitly reference our work we ask that you please give prominent attribution to both the tool authors and edCode.org. In addition, we ask that you please ensure clarity that you are not in any way a representative of our organization.

Example Authorization Prompt Screen, With Explanations