Terms of Use

Version 1.3, effective October 27, 2026.

These Terms of Use ("Terms") are between you and Writeroom ("we", "us"): the person who operates writeroom.org and app.writeroom.org and who signs each School's Order Form. Writeroom's legal name and mailing address are given in each School's Order Form and are provided on request through the contact form at writeroom.org/contact. These Terms apply to anyone who visits writeroom.org, and to every administrator, teacher and student who signs in to the Writeroom app at app.writeroom.org or uses the Writeroom Chrome extension (together, the "Service").

Please read these Terms before you click "I agree" or use the Service. By clicking "I agree", or by using the Service, you accept these Terms. If you are using Writeroom through your school, your school's agreement with us (the "School Agreement") also applies, and it controls if it conflicts with these Terms. Section 2 explains how these Terms apply to students.

Capitalized words have the meanings in section 15 or in the School Agreement.

1. Who may use Writeroom

1.1 Writeroom is available only through a school, school board or other educational institution that has signed an agreement with us (a "School"). We do not sell Writeroom to individuals or consumers. Students can make their own account, but an account that is not connected to a School sees only a page asking them to open the assignment link their teacher shared.

1.2 You may use the Service only if your School has made you an Authorized User: by inviting you, by its teacher invite link (teachers), by an assignment link from your teacher (students, with your School's email domain rules), or by your signing in with a verified email address on a domain your School has registered. A student can belong to only one School. Your School decides who its Authorized Users are and can remove access at any time.

1.3 Visitors to writeroom.org who do not sign in are bound only by sections 1, 5, 10, 11, 12, 14 and 15 of these Terms and by the Privacy Policy.

2. Students

2.1 If you are a student, you use Writeroom because your School has decided to use it as part of your schoolwork. Your School, not you, is Writeroom's contracting party. Your School is responsible for telling you and, where required, your parents or guardians what Writeroom records, and for any consent the law requires.

2.2 These Terms tell you the rules for using Writeroom. If you are under the age of majority in your province, nothing in these Terms makes you a party to a contract with Writeroom, and nothing in them takes away any right you have under the law. The only things we ask of students are in section 4 (your account) and section 5 (acceptable use). Where a clause of these Terms would not be enforceable against you because of your age, it does not apply to you.

2.3 If you have a question or concern about how Writeroom works or what it records, talk to your teacher or your School's Writeroom administrator. You, or your parent or guardian, can ask your School to see what Writeroom recorded about your work, to correct it, to delete it, and to have any decision about your work reviewed under your School's process. Your School can export the full record, including the evidence behind any signal, and Writeroom helps your School do that. You can also read the Student Privacy Notice at writeroom.org/privacy/students, which is linked from the editor menu.

3. What Writeroom records

3.1 Writeroom is a writing space that records how a document was written so that teachers can see the writing process. Inside assignment documents, Writeroom records your edits and when you made them, the keys you press in the editor, what you paste and where it came from, text you copy or cut in the document, when you leave the document and for how long, and, if your School uses them, screen clips during supervised work and the Chrome extension's reports. The full list is in the Student Privacy Notice and is shown to you on the assignment join page and the first time you open each assignment, before anything is recorded.

3.2 Writeroom records only in documents that belong to an assignment. Documents a student creates on their own are not recorded and are not visible to teachers unless the student shares one.

3.3 The Privacy Policy at writeroom.org/privacy explains how we handle personal information.

4. Your account

4.1 Keep your sign-in details private and do not share your account. Sign out when you finish on a shared computer. Use a password of at least 10 characters that is not a common password, and turn on two-factor authentication if you are a School administrator.

4.2 Tell your School administrator, or us through the contact form at writeroom.org/contact (topic: Support), if you think someone else has used your account.

4.3 Your School controls your account. Your School can change your role, remove you, export your data and delete it under its agreement with us. If you leave your School, your access ends.

5. Acceptable use

5.1 You must follow the Acceptable Use Policy at writeroom.org/legal/acceptable-use, which is part of these Terms. In short: use Writeroom honestly and for schoolwork; do not try to break, probe or bypass it; do not interfere with recording or with other people's work; do not upload unlawful or harmful content; do not harass anyone; do not use Writeroom's signals to target or humiliate a student; and do not enter other people's passwords, codes or private information.

6. Your content

6.1 You and your School own what you write. Writeroom does not own student writing, teacher comments, assignments or anything else you put in the Service ("Your Content"). As between you and your School, who owns or may use Your Content is a matter for your School's policies, not these Terms.

6.2 You allow Writeroom to store, process and display Your Content only as needed to run the Service for your School and as the School Agreement and Privacy Policy permit. We never sell Your Content, never show ads, and never use student writing to train AI models.

6.3 Writeroom owns the Service itself: the software, design, models and documentation. You may use it only as these Terms and your School allow.

7. Integrity Signals: a reason to look, not proof

7.1 Writeroom produces flags, scores, AI-detector results, writing-path summaries and similar indicators ("Integrity Signals") that point teachers to moments in a writing history that may be worth a closer look. Integrity Signals are indicators only. They can be wrong. They are not proof that anyone did anything wrong, and they never make a decision. Dictation, assistive technology, writing in a language other than English, short texts, pasting your own notes and many ordinary things can produce a signal.

7.2 Decisions about grades, academic integrity and discipline are made by people at your School under your School's own process, not by Writeroom. Writeroom is not responsible for decisions your School makes. Teachers and administrators agree to read "How to read Writeroom's signals" at writeroom.org/signals before relying on any Integrity Signal, to talk with the student before reaching a conclusion, and never to use an Integrity Signal as the sole basis for an adverse decision about a student. When a teacher records an integrity decision, the teacher chooses one of three outcomes ("No concern", "Discussed with student" or "Integrity concern confirmed by teacher") and must write their own note; Writeroom does not draft it.

8. AI features

8.1 Some features (AI-assisted marking, Translate, Dictionary and the teacher assistant) send content to an external AI service. They are on for a new School, because the School's agreement covers them, and a School administrator can turn them off. When on, the content needed for the request is sent to the AI providers listed at writeroom.org/subprocessors and processed in the United States. Writeroom does not add students' names, email addresses or identifiers to these requests (a name a student typed into their own work may be in the text), and sends every request with settings that allow it to go only to providers that do not train on or keep the content.

8.2 AI outputs are suggestions. They can be inaccurate, incomplete or inappropriate. Teachers decide what to do with them; Writeroom never changes a grade or a document because of an AI output. We make no promise about the accuracy of any AI output.

9. The Chrome extension

9.1 The Writeroom Chrome extension helps teachers connect Writeroom with Google Classroom and, for students, reports limited information while a Writeroom assignment document is open: the domains of sites you switch to (the full address only for listed AI tool sites), a count of open tabs, text you copy on listed AI tool sites and, in supervised assignments, screenshots of an AI tool tab if you open one. It records nothing at other times, and nothing about your typing on other sites. Your School decides whether to install it. The extension depends on Google Chrome and the Chrome Web Store, which we do not control.

10. Availability and changes

10.1 We work to keep the Service available and will tell your School in advance of planned maintenance where we can. The Service may still be interrupted by things we do not control, such as your network, your device, Google or Chrome, or our hosting providers. We do not promise that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free. Unsaved work is kept on your device and sent when the connection returns, as described in the Documentation.

10.2 We may change or improve the Service. Your School receives notice of changes that reduce functionality or change what is recorded, under the School Agreement.

11. Disclaimers

11.1 Except as stated in the School Agreement, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law permits, we disclaim all other warranties and conditions, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We do not warrant that Writeroom will detect or prevent academic dishonesty or AI-generated writing, or that any Integrity Signal or AI output is accurate.

11.2 If you are a School, the warranties and remedies in the School Agreement apply instead of this section.

12. Limitation of liability

12.1 To the fullest extent permitted by law, Writeroom is not liable to you for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost data, lost profits or loss of reputation, arising out of or in connection with the Service, and Writeroom's total liability to you for all claims arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the Service will not exceed CAD [100], or, if you are a School, the amount stated in the School Agreement.

12.2 This section does not limit liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for fraud or wilful misconduct, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence. If you are a consumer under the law of your province (Writeroom does not sell to consumers, but if that law nonetheless applies to you), nothing in these Terms limits any right that consumer-protection law does not allow to be limited or waived, and this section applies only to the extent that law permits. Nothing in these Terms limits any right a student or parent has under privacy or education law.

12.3 Where you use the Service through a School, any claim about the Service is a matter between Writeroom and your School under the School Agreement, and your School is responsible for how it and its staff use the Service and make decisions about students.

13. Suspension and ending access

13.1 Your School can suspend or remove your access at any time under its own rules. We may suspend or remove your access if you seriously or repeatedly breach the Acceptable Use Policy, if your use threatens the security of the Service or other people, or if the law requires. We will tell your School, and where it is safe and lawful we will tell you first and give you a chance to fix the problem. For students, we act through the School wherever possible.

13.2 When your School's agreement with us ends, you can still read and export your own work for 30 days. Writeroom deletes the School's data within 60 days after the agreement ends, and backup copies age out within 35 days after that, as the School Agreement provides.

14. Changes to these Terms

14.1 We may update these Terms. If we make a material change, we will post the new version with a new effective date at least 30 days before it takes effect, tell your School, and ask you to accept the new version the next time you sign in after it takes effect. For users of a School, the School Agreement controls, and a change that reduces the School's rights or increases its obligations does not apply to the School's users until the School agrees or its agreement renews. If you do not agree with a change, stop using the Service and talk to your School.

15. Governing law, definitions and contact

15.1 These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of [Ontario] and the federal laws of Canada applicable there, and the courts of [Ontario] have jurisdiction, except that: (a) if you use the Service through a School whose agreement with us names another province, that province's laws and courts apply; and (b) nothing in this section takes away your right to bring a claim in the courts of your own province where the law gives you that right regardless of these Terms.

15.2 "Authorized User", "Customer Data", "Student Data", "Documentation" and "Subprocessor" have the meanings in the School Agreement. "Privacy Policy" means the policy at writeroom.org/privacy. If these Terms conflict with the School Agreement, the School Agreement (including its Order Form and Data Protection Addendum) controls; if they conflict with the Privacy Policy, these Terms control.

15.3 If a part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies. These Terms, the Acceptable Use Policy and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and Writeroom about the Service, subject to the School Agreement. Students, parents and guardians are not parties to the School Agreement; they have the rights the law gives them.

15.4 Questions and general enquiries: the contact form at writeroom.org/contact (choose the topic that fits: Privacy, Support, Security or Schools). Legal notices to Writeroom: if you are a School, use the Writeroom contact details in your Order Form; otherwise use the contact form, and we will give you a mailing address on request.

Record of acceptance: the Service records the date, time, account and Terms version when an Authorized User clicks "I agree" at first sign-in, and asks again when a material new version takes effect. Students are also shown the Student Privacy Notice at that time. The full text is shown, scrollable, before the button, and a link to it stays in the Service menu. A School administrator's click accepts these Terms for that person only, not for the School: the School's agreement with Writeroom is the signed Order Form.