Privacy Policy

Students and classroom use

PotentELL does not have student accounts. Students cannot sign up, sign in, or create a profile, and there is no place for a teacher to enter a student roster. Only teachers hold accounts.

Students reach a teacher’s vocabulary list through a shared practice link, or by entering a topic code that lists what their teacher shared. Neither asks for a name, email, or any other identifying information, and neither requires signing in. Vocabulary practice happens in the browser; PotentELL does not create student profiles or retain per-student practice scores or progress histories.

Guess My Element also offers temporary two-player game rooms. A game code connects two devices without names or accounts. The game server stores chosen elements, questions, answers, turns, and the current winner so the devices can play together. Random access tokens identify seats only within that room, not students across games. Room access expires one hour after creation. Either player can end the room and delete its game record.

A topic code is a lookup, not an account. Entering one writes nothing and stores nothing about whoever entered it.

Because of this, teachers can use PotentELL with students without collecting or transmitting student personal information. If your school requires a vendor data agreement or a FERPA/COPPA review, contact us and we will describe this setup in whatever form your district needs.

What we collect from teachers

A teacher account stores the name, email address, and profile photo supplied by the Google account used to sign in, plus the topics, topic codes, and vocabulary lists you create, your language preferences, your plan, and a monthly count of translations performed. Support messages and anything you send through the contact form are kept so we can reply.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use your classroom content to train AI models.

Services that process your data

PotentELL is run by one person and relies on established providers rather than its own infrastructure. Each of these processes some of your data:

• Google Firebase (Authentication, Firestore, Cloud Storage) — sign-in, and storage of your account, topics, vocabulary lists, uploaded images, and temporary two-player game rooms.
• Vercel — hosting. Vercel processes standard server request logs, including IP addresses.
• Google Gemini API — used by the Slides and Docs translators. When you translate a document with ELL supports enabled, its text is sent to Google’s Gemini API to be simplified or turned into sentence frames before translation. If you turn on OCR, images in the selected file are also sent to Gemini so visible text can be recognized. Do not run documents containing student names or other sensitive information through the translators.
• Google Cloud Translation and Text-to-Speech — translation of document text and pronunciation audio.
• Stripe — payment processing for paid plans. Card details go directly to Stripe; PotentELL never receives or stores them.

Google Slides and Docs access

If you connect a Google account to use the translators, PotentELL requests access to Google Slides and Google Docs, and to individual Drive files you pick yourself through Google’s file picker. It cannot browse or read the rest of your Drive. Translation creates a new copy; your original file is never modified. You can disconnect at any time in your Google account’s third-party access settings, which revokes the access immediately.

Sharing and visibility

PotentELL does not treat personal classroom or account data as public content. A teacher controls what is shared: a vocabulary list stays private to that teacher’s account until they mark it public to other teachers or share it with students. Turning sharing off withdraws access — the practice link stops working, rather than merely disappearing from a list.

Keeping and deleting data

Your topics and vocabulary lists are kept until you delete them or ask us to close your account. Deleting a list removes it and any shared copy of it. Document text and images sent to the translators are processed to produce your translation and are not retained by PotentELL afterwards.

Temporary game rooms stop accepting requests after one hour. Expired room records are removed through background cleanup; physical deletion can occur after access expires. Aggregate admission counters limit room creation and joining without storing player names, IP addresses, or device identifiers in those counters. Standard hosting request logs are separate.

To request a copy of your data or have your account deleted, email hello@potentell.com. There are no student accounts or persistent student progress records.

Questions and policy changes

Privacy questions, district review requests, and anything unclear on this page go to hello@potentell.com or the contact form. This page changes as the platform does; material updates carry a revised date.

Data protection disclosures

When you use a Google Workspace translation tool, PotentELL accesses only the Google Slides or Google Docs file you select or authorize. For Slides, this includes the presentation’s text, speaker notes where present, images when you enable OCR, and the limited file metadata needed to perform the task, such as the file name, file ID, and parent folder. PotentELL uses this data only to create the translated copy or other output you request.

PotentELL processes the selected file’s content and metadata for the duration of the translation request and does not retain that content or metadata after processing is complete. Translated copies and optional PDF exports are created in your Google Drive and remain there under your control until you delete them. Encrypted Google authorization tokens and basic connection information are retained while your Google account remains connected so the feature can operate. You can revoke that access through your Google account’s third-party access settings, and you may ask us to delete your PotentELL account as described above.

We do not sell Google Workspace user data or share it for advertising, profiling, or unrelated purposes. Data is disclosed only to the service providers identified in this policy when necessary to provide the translation or support feature you requested.

The use of raw or derived user data received from Google Workspace APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We do not use Google Workspace user data to train, develop, or improve any AI/ML models.