Google Apps proposal
A couple of days ago I was at an departmental ICT representatives’ meeting at school. Every problem that was flagged up seemed to me to be easily solved by an installation of Google Apps Education Edition:
- Want to be able to provide staff/pupils with more than 10MB webspace? GMail offers over 6GB!
- Want students to be able to start work at school and finish off at home? Try Google Docs!
- Want departments to be able to quickly and easily create websites? Use Google Pages or Google Sites!
That evening I started putting together a proposal. As usual, I tweeted about what I was up to.
A few kindly folks – namely Tom Barrett, Dave Stacey, Damian Bariexca, Kevin Jarrett, Miguel Guhlin, Paul Williams and Daniel Stucke were kind enough to give me feedback and suggestions.
The version I submitted to the Senior Leadership Team and those in charge of ICT at my school is available here:
For various reasons, I doubt that it will gain any traction at my school. However, I’m putting it up here with the hope that it may prove useful to someone else in their cause! 😀
A simple and free solution, they’ll never go for it!
I actually suggested using Google Docs as a means to easily access a common plan for tests for a class or all classes in a year. But I was told it is not secure enough. (“It” here meaning anything internet, not inside the horrible VLE we are using.) The point being that if we start using “open” places to store some documents, suddenly someone not knowing entirely what they are doing put sensitive information “out there”. I gave up the discussion, since I have not actually tried anything from Google exept the search enging, thus not having strong arguments.
But the thought is intreaguing (how is that spelt again?) – and I have a suspicion that open-source applications may be just as good if not better than what we are using.
> For various reasons, I doubt that it will gain any traction at my school.
Care to enumerate? I, for one, would find it very useful to get your insights into the issues that inhibit takeup of free solutions.
Do you have an idea of what is likely to be adopted instead, if anything?
I found your proposal very interesting.
It is unfortunate to term everything internet as not safe. In fact education edition has almost everything as premier edition except 25GB (they have 6GB) mailbox and Postini. You can even integrate with your school’s systems by Single Sign On as API is provided.
Doug,
Thanks for this. On March 27th, I’ll be working with a group of about 30 teachers and will be introducing Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Sites to them. My administration is very excited about the ease with which our teachers will be able to create and maintain a web presence. I plan on broadcasting the presentation on UStream, so if anyone is interested, you can let me know at [email protected].
So we are really looking for apps that can replace the utilities supposedly available in the VLEs that schools should have in place by the end of this month.
I admit the apps you have mentioned are actually rather good, but as also hinted, they are open to the threats from the WWW and its inhabitants. The VLE should provide a nice safe secure environment for the children to work in.
I setup Google Apps at my school for 2 English classes 4 weeks ago (Feb. 2008).
http://www.adamscott.ca-a.googlepages.com/home
Google Apps has been great. Students are able to collaborate both with the teacher and with other students for group assignments. Marks are posted on-line. Teacher Calendar is a great organizational tool. I have had no negative comments. I have had other teachers ask me to get their classes on-line. Best part – It’s free.
More info see my web site:
http://www.schoolinfo.ca/connectingeducation/googleApps.htm
Your proposal is really reasonable!