By Lance Whitney. The search giant says it will no longer collect student data to use for advertising purposes. Google says it is no longer mining the accounts of Google Apps for Education users for advertising data. Revealing the new policy in a blog post Tuesday, Bram Bout, director of Google for Education, also said that Google has removed a toggle to enable and disable ads in the Apps for Education Administrator console. Removing the toggle means that ads in the Apps for Education suite are now automatically turned off, and administrators cannot turn them back on. Google Apps for Education provides the usual lineup of apps for email, calendar, and document creation but is geared toward students and teachers. More...

Blackboard Inc. and Discovery Education today announced a powerful new partnership supporting the integration of digital content into university and community college courses nationwide. Through the partnership, higher education faculty and students can now access Discovery Education’s dynamic digital media through Blackboard’s teaching and learning environment and on their mobile devices. In addition, the two companies are building a K-12 focused integration with plans to launch later this year. More...

By Pamela Mills-Senn. Electronic document management systems make it easier to comply with digital content regulations, but complacency can threaten effectiveness. Around 4,000 boxes of paper records fill the shelves in Central New Mexico Community College’s storage area. And many of these boxes—those containing employee personnel files, for example—must remain in storage for up to 55 years before they can be destroyed. More...