Safe Search Classroom Bing Available

Microsoft’s program Bing in the Classroom has now opened up to all kindergarten to 12th grade schools in the US. As part of the program the Bing for School search, a mixture of safe search and an add free environment has been pilot tested in in more than 5000 schools and 4.5 million children since the start of the school year.  The program was first announced in June of 2013, followed shortly by the Scroogled campaign in August, highlighting that Google showed ads in their Search results while Bing’s new program would not. Bing has also stated that they add filters to prevent adult content.

Matt Walleraert, of Microsoft and the creator Bing in the Classroom

We created Bing in the Classroom because we believe students deserve a search environment tailored for learning. Classrooms should be ad-free, and that should be as true online as it is offline,

For the program, the school must first register with the program so that it cannot be used by those who simply want an add free Bing at home. Student using the program can earn credits  for the Bing Rewards program in order to procure new Surface tablets for their school.

The new program will also have daily lesson plans based on the images used on the homepage. This is  so, as to allow the images to be incorporated into the classroom. Bings Microsoft Educator Network will have a stock on the previous images used and the associated lesson plans.

Bing hopes to earn indirectly by hoping children who use Bing in school will use Bing at home where the adds will not be disabled allowing for revenue generation

Bing prides itself as being the only major search engine to offer this add free service to students despite many “safe search for kids” claims by Google.