Read a post on TechCrunch about Google entering into the Office 2.0 realm, which I thought was notable, but hardly surprising. There was no mention at all though of something that’s much more significant in my opinion. When I followed the link through, I discovered that Google is also offering up their services to educators!
Sharing information and ideas is vital to learning. So imagine how valuable it would be if your entire campus community shared a set of powerful, easy-to-use and integrated communication and collaboration services. With Google Apps for Education, you can offer all of your students innovative email, instant messaging, and calendaring, all for free.* You can select any combination of our available services (see below), and customize them with your school’s logo, color scheme and content. You can manage your users through an easy web-based console or use our available APIs to integrate the services into your existing systems — and it’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.
*Schools accepted by Google during the Google Apps for Your Domain beta period are eligible for free service for their approved beta users even beyond the end of the beta period, as described in the Terms of Service.*
The apps they’re starting off with are Gmail, Google Talk and Google Calendar. They’ve also got an administration module for managing your accounts. Interestingly, the non-education version also includes Google Pages. Kinda curious as to why that one was left off.
There’s no indication of what the pricing might eventually be, but they do state that the people who get in during beta are grandfathered in and won’t be charged when it moves to 1.0, so if you’re school might even be remotely interested in it, sign up now. Free email, calendaring and of course, the always controversial chat. Can’t go wrong with that!
I can vouch for it. We use Hosted Gmail which turned into Google Apps for your Domain, although I have not switched to the education version (not sure how I would). I can say that from an admin side the interface is amazing, and I was able to add a lot of email addresses one by one in relatively little time. It also allows for an uploaded list via .csv file. We do not use the calendar yet, as my classes are so short, and the talk client is tragically blocked. Nonetheless, it is nice to see all of this for education.
[…] Google Apps for Education (Via Teach42.) Here is Steve Dembo noting the new Google Apps in Education service. From the Google page: Sharing information and ideas is vital to learning. So imagine how valuable it would be if your entire campus community shared a set of powerful, easy-to-use and integrated communication and collaboration services. With Google Apps for Education, you can offer all of your students innovative email, instant messaging, and calendaring, all for free.* You can select any combination of our available services (see below), and customize them with your school’s logo, color scheme and content. You can manage your users through an easy web-based console or use our available APIs to integrate the services into your existing systems — and it’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software for you to install or maintain. […]
I’ve been closely evaluating GAFE (Google Apps for Ed), have done initial setup and lots of experimentation to see what it is capable of. Frankly, as of this moment, January 21, 2007, this service does not seem ready for prime time. The interfaces are clumsy. Stunning feature omissions abound. The domain email and the calendars are about the only useful features for a school organization. And, for the life of me, I can’t see why they even call it “for Education” — what, exactly, is “education” about it? It’s not a comprehensive tool yet, and it’s glaring feature and usability omissions make me pause before going forward.
I’d sure love to see a list of links to other sites using it!
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