Hi Dan,
Thanks for your comments. We have actually discussed in our school (which uses GAFE) how to provide some sort of parent portal… at the moment GAFE only supplies students with @schoolname.ca login addresses (the only way to access GAFE sites / Drive / Docs etc), so I’m not sure how that would work. Perhaps it’s something they will look at, though I’m of the opinion that parents really don’t need to be as involved in the school lives of students (in Grades 8-12… it may be a different story for younger kids). We have a bit of a ‘helicopter parent’ issue at our school (where parents micromanage their kids to the point that they have no lives outside of school & academics: clubs, sports, cram school, tutors, lessons, etc… they barely get a chance to catch 5-6 hours of sleep!) so I’m not sure giving access to parents is a good idea. As for your suggestions as a corporation, I do believe that having the added features of a full LMS will attract schools into giving up Moodle/Blackboard etc as their preferred LMS and hop over to Google. The added incentives involved in becoming fully “Google” as far as revenue would likely come from the fact that students and teachers are more accustomed to working in the cloud-based environment and may be more likely to purchase, as a school, Chromebooks, or other Google-compabible devices (Google Cardboard, phones and tablets running Android), since at the moment, the GAFE subscription is free.