‘Bing for Schools’ Tweaks Search Engine, Removes Ads for Students
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Microsoft is making a play for the education sector with Bing for Schools, a voluntary program that tailors the company’s search engine for students based in the US. The tweaked Bing experience, suitable for students between kindergarten and the end of high school, removes all advertisements from the search engine due to Microsoft’s belief that schools “are for learning and not selling.” SafeSearch, Bing’s built-in feature for filtering out adult content, will also be configured to the strictest setting automatically and be amended so that students are unable to change it back manually. A bundle of other enhanced privacy protections will also be present, although Microsoft says these are still to be finalized. Bing for Schools will also be bundled with a number of short lesson plans that staff can use to teach basic digital literacy skills related to search and the Common Core.
