(excerpt from oregonlive.com)The mad morning scramble to find your child's flash drive, containing his class project only to discover you washed it in his pants pocket the night before, could be over.

Oregon was the first state to sign up for Google Apps for Education in 2010 and make it available to K-12 school districts. The free program, with its host of tools, allows students to access their class work from home, the library or anywhere they have Internet access.

The two-inch long flash drive, a computer memory card, was the only way to take work home and it relied on the student having the same software as the school.

But the very thing that makes Google Apps so accessible and appealing worries some parents: They don't want Google or anyone outside the district to have access to their children's private information. [click to keep reading]