Thousands of institutions have adopted Google Apps for Education and already enjoy the tremendous collaboration boosts and cost savings that come along with it. Many, however, may be less familiar with the Google Apps Marketplace (not to mention the recently launched Education category in the Marketplace which includes applications for student tools and teaching aids). As the Apps Marketplace celebrates its first birthday, we invite you to learn how one Google Apps customer has deployed an innovative Google Docs management app from the marketplace and how it has impacted the visibility of collaboration and sharing within their organization.
Join us for a webinar on April 7th at 11am PST to hear Boise State University’s Brian Bolt, the Office for Information and Technology Team Lead, share how they are using Google Apps and CloudLock from the Google Apps Marketplace. Brian will share his lessons on rolling out Google Apps and demonstrate how CloudLock addresses some of the core IT control and visibility requirements they faced when moving increasing amounts of their organization’s data to the cloud. Specifically, Brian will cover how CloudLock helps to address:
Governance - Managing access to data to mitigate unauthorized access
Protection - Define and enforce document ownership and sharing policies
Analytics - Understanding how to effectively make sense of data
CloudLock’s Co-Founder, Tsahy Shapsa, will also share how their app has made it possible for organizations to extend their Google Docs repositories in order to begin to retire their legacy on-premise file servers, effectively producing a significant ROI with real hard and soft cost savings. We hope you’ll tune in to hear more about how Boise State has leveraged CloudLock.
The Power of the Apps Marketplace: A Webinar with CloudLock and Boise State Thursday, April 7th, 2011 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT Register here
Posted by Jordan Pedraza, Google Apps for Education Team
After many months of planning, today the University of Alberta – one of Canada's largest research-intensive universities – will begin providing its faculty, staff and students with Google Apps for Education. About 40,000 students will start making the switch today, with faculty and staff following over the coming months. This agreement paves the way for other Canadian institutions to go Google.
Jonathan Schaeffer, the University’s Vice Provost for Information Technology, says: “This is good news for the University of Alberta. Moving to Google will ultimately have a positive and transformative effect on teaching and learning on campus.” The migration will not only improve campus-wide communication and collaboration, but will reduce the current 80+ independent email servers on campus to one single system for everyone.
In the US, we are also thrilled to welcome some of the other schools, colleges and universities that have recently joined the family of more than 11 million users of Google Apps for Education, including:
Douglas County School District
Humboldt State University
Lakeshore Technical College
Linn-Benton Community College
Madison Metropolitan School District
Santa Barbara City College
St. Joseph School District
SUNY Fredonia
Township High School District
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Western Oregon University
Posted by Lauren Miskelly, Google Apps for Education Team
March is a special time for college basketball enthusiasts as the NCAA® Championship games heat up. This season is especially exciting for us on the Apps for Education team to watch, as more than half of the teams in this year’s tournament have Gone Google – meaning they’re using Google Apps for Education on campus.
With more than 11 million students, faculty and staff who are already part of the Google Apps “squad” – providing their campus community with collaboration and communication tools – we’d like to congratulate the 37 Apps schools who are vying for the championship and wish them luck with the rest of the tournament, including:
Alabama State University
Belmont University
Bucknell University
Clemson University
Gonzaga University
Notre Dame
Old Dominion University
San Diego State University
Temple University
University of Akron
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
University of Kentucky
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
University of Texas at San Antonio
University of Southern California
University of Washington
Utah State University
Vanderbilt University
Villanova University
For information about how to become a 100% web campus, please visit google.com/apps/edu. While we’re sorry to say we can’t promise any success on the basketball court, you can at least make your own bracket a "slam dunk" with the Google Docs bracket template!
Posted by Steven Butschi, Google Apps for Education team (and college hoops enthusiast)
Interested in joining the thousands of schools and millions of students, staff and faculty currently using Google Apps for Education? We’ll be holding a webinar series in March that will help you do just that.
These webinars will cover a number of topics - from an overview of Google Apps and its services to a deep dive into the Google Apps control panel. These webinars will be run by members of the Google Apps for Education team who can share lessons learned and best practices. Feel free to register for one session or the entire series. Hope you’ll join us for Google Apps for Education 101!
Guest Post: Philip Greenspun is a pioneer in developing online communities and an educator who has taught electrical engineering and computer science courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1987.Today he explains how he used Google Docs to develop and distribute curricular materials and to support in-classroom discussion of student solutions.
In 1983, I began building applications to support multi-user collaboration over the Internet. When I began using the World Wide Web in 1993 I vowed never to write a native application program again and said "every desktop computer program going forward should simply run in a Web browser." Since the main reason to prepare a document was for others to view, I predicted that everyone would be using browser-based word processors and spreadsheet programs by the year 2000. I am still waiting for my "everyone goes to work in a flying car" prediction to come true also...
In January 2011, four of us were developing an entirely new course for MIT students, an intensive lab-based SQL programming and Android development class. All of us are proficient Web developers accustomed to authoring pages in standard text editors and publishing them on our own servers, but it turned out to be easier and more effective to use Google Docs to collaboratively develop course materials. Google Docs was more effective because simultaneous updates could proceed in different areas of a document and we weren't slowed down by having to do explicit check-ins with a standard version control system (or circulate drafts with names such as "DayOneProblems-final-version-by-philg-really-really-final"). Also, the "insert a comment" feature of Google Docs proved useful, e.g., when I wasn't sure if an example program was correct and wanted to ask a collaborator to check, but without leaving crud in the main body of the document.
We created two Google Docs folders the night before class: lessons, editable by us and view-only for students; workspace, editable by everyone. Into the "lessons" folder we moved the first day's assignment. In the "workspace" folder we created a "Day 1 Workspace" document intended for students to cut and paste code into. As each student walked into the classroom, we asked him or her to email a teacher from his or her Google Account (most students already had Gmail and some experience with Google Docs) and the teacher would share both folders with the new student, immediately enabling access to all lessons.
As the course materials had never been used before, they contained some errors and many sections that lacked sufficient hints or explanations. When we noticed these deficiencies, e.g., when a student asked a question, we would edit the problem set from a teacher's laptop and all students would immediately see the change on the projector and/or on their own screens.
Google Docs enabled us to distribute solutions incrementally. The first morning we created a "Day 1 Solutions (January 2011)" document and dragged it into the lessons (view-only for students) folder. As the day progressed, when 90 percent of the students were done with a problem, we would add the solution to the end of this document (by copying from another Google Doc, of course) so that students would have it in front of them and be prepared for the discussion.
The shared Google Docs workspace documents enabled us to have students paste their work into shared documents that could be used for projection and discussion and also for members of the class to try out each other's SQL queries.
To gather feedback at the end of the course, we simply created a feedback document and put it into the workspace folder, then used the "email editors/viewers" feature (from the Share menu) to ask students to add their thoughts, including whether they liked Google Docs ("great for sharing solutions"; "very effective"; "Generally yes, I did get a little confused with all the browser tabs I had open"; "very efficient and comfortable"; "green too").
We were technical people teaching a technical course, but everything that we did with Google Docs would have been easy for a person without any programming or HTML authoring background. Google Docs was an important asset for our course and significantly enhanced the in-classroom experience.
We talk a lot about “going Google”, and with more schools and universities – like Ann Arbor Public Schools, Bryant University, Bucknell University, Henry Ford Community College, NYU, Oklahoma State University, and Southern Oregon University – migrating to Google Apps for Education every day, we want to help make it as easy (and fun) as possible to make the move.
Whether you are just thinking about launching Apps, or you’re toasting to your first graduating class after four years in the cloud – it’s always a good idea to educate your users about the new ways they can teach and learn with Google Apps. With that in mind, we’ve created the new Guide to Going Google which provides tools and resources that help students, faculty, staff and alumni make the most of your transition. The guide outlines six steps to successfully going Google: technical deployment, outreach, training, getting the word out, going live, and staying up to date. We designed this guide to be helpful for everyone from a 4th grade teacher in a classroom that’s just learning about Google Apps, to a university CIO that’s been using Apps for years.
Of course, if you’re still evaluating hosted collaboration tools for your school, and want to understand why so many schools have already gone Google, take a minute to hear what CIOs at Kent State, Brandeis, North Carolina State and U.C. Riverside are saying about making the move to Apps:
P.S. For those schools who have already gone Google, we'd love to hear and see your creative approaches to making the transition successful. Maybe you brought your mascot the a faculty training like they did at Brown University; or had a special group of on-the-ground trainers like the Creek Squad. Maybe you did something bold like NC State who created a graffiti wall to mark the occasion of your launch. Let us know how you’ve gone Google, so we can help other schools can get inspired, too.
Posted by Dana Nguyen and Miriam Schneider, Apps for Education team
This December, we’re kicking off a series of free “Extra Credit” webinars covering advanced topics for IT leaders in education, such as integrating Google Apps with LMSes (learning management systems), SISes (Student Information Systems), and other common learning programs, like student e-portfolios.
We’re excited to have experts from Northwestern University, Truman State University, Clemson University, SunGard Higher Education, and Appirio, Inc. sharing their experience and learnings in this first set of webinars, running December 6 - 9, at 11AM PST daily. Topics will include:
What EDU can learn from Enterprise deployments [video]
Google Apps as an Eportfolio solution at Clemson U. [video]
Integrating Google Apps and Blackboard™ with Bboogle at Northwestern U. [video]
Integrating Google Apps with SunGard Higher Education ® products at Truman State U. (includes Luminis 5 / Google Apps demo) [video]
Last week, we celebrated a big milestone for Google Apps for Education: 10 million active users. While a lot of the credit belongs to the school IT leaders and teachers who recognized the collaboration and learning potential of services like Google Docs, Google Sites, and school-wide Gmail, we’d be remiss if we didn’t also mention the many partners and integration projects that have helped support Google Apps for Education.
We were lucky enough to have several of these partners join us in our EDUCAUSE booth last week, and share how they’ve helped deploy and connect Apps with many widely-used learning management systems in higher ed. If you weren’t able to make it to these sessions in our conference booth, here’s a recap of how schools can integrate Apps with the technology platforms commonly used by colleges and universities today:
Blackboard + Apps: Northwestern University’s Bboogle project is a free, open-source integration that lets schools integrate Google Apps with Blackboard’s learning management system. This video and case study shows how a history professor at Northwestern used Google Sites to create a collaborative encyclopedia with his students; Bboogle managed authoring permissions for the class and provided links between the Blackboard course site and Google Sites.
Sakai + Apps:rSmart showcased the new Google Apps functionality that’s available in the upcoming 2.7.1 release of their Sakai collaborative learning environment. Sharing a Google Doc in Sakai now lets Sakai handle which users have access – often a volatile course roster as students drop and add classes – without having to manage a separate list of usernames with Google. For a sneak peek, check out this video and case study.
Moodle + Apps: Moodle solutions provider Moodlerooms displayed the single sign-on, automatic user provisioning, and Google Apps widget integration available in joule™. More information is available in this case study, or the related Moodle-Google open-source code.
MyCampus + Apps: The CampusEAI Consortium’s student portal solution includes an out-of-the-box Google Apps integration that’s used by over 50 universities and colleges, allowing students to engage with Google Apps without leaving their portal environment. A case study is available here.
We’re impressed with how these partners have used our open APIs (plus App Engine and the Apps Marketplace) to make Apps even more useful to schools, and we look forward to sharing even more success stories in the future!
Posted by Jason Cook, Google Apps for Education Team
It was four years ago this month that Google Apps for Education first touched down, right before a pivotal football game between ASU and USC—fatefully enough, two schools that were among the first to move to Google Apps and pave the way for other schools to adopt this “alien technology.”
This week at EDUCAUSE we’re celebrating with these schools and the thousands of others that make up more than 10 million students, staff, faculty and alumni that are actively using Apps for Education on campus. We figured that nothing was more fitting than a tailgate celebration to toast the colleges and universities that have “gone Google.” And of course, it’s not really a party without inviting the marching band.
In the last four years we’ve seen a lot of changes, both to our tools and the general landscape of cloud computing in higher education. According to the 2010 Campus Computing project, nearly 85% of four-year colleges and universities are already using or considering moving to the cloud by offering hosted email to their students. Of those schools that have already made the move, more than 56% of them have gone Google.
As part of this sustained momentum, we’ve seen the number of active Google Apps for Education users double since last fall, with more than two million new users coming on board since May alone; not to mention the emerging growth we’re now seeing in the K-12 space.
Hundreds of schools have made the move to Google Apps just this year, including Gonzaga University, Barnard, Brown University, William and Mary, Villanova University, Georgetown School of Business, Case Western Reserve University, Hawai’i Pacific University, Brandeis University, more than half of the 23 campuses in the California State University system, Morehouse College, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Texas A&M Alumni, University of Tennessee Chattanooga, 13 of the SUNY schools, Pace University and Wilfrid Laurier—to name just a few.
The USC Trojan Marching Band helped us give a spirited cheer to the schools who have gone Google and the progress we’ve seen in the last four years. But like any good commencement address will tell you, this is only the beginning.
Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps for Education Team
Today we’re happy to announce that The Maryland Education Enterprise Consortium (MEEC) will make Google Apps for Education available to 1.4 million students in the state. MEEC is comprised of the University System of Maryland, Maryland Higher Education Commission and Maryland Department of Education, and provides software resources and services to its 194 members across the state. This includes all 24 public K-12 districts, libraries and all public and private higher education institutions.
Maryland joins the ranks of Oregon, Colorado and Iowa, who each enabled their educational institutions to “go Google” under one statewide agreement. And more than 8 million other students, staff and faculty across the globe actively use our free messaging and collaboration suite.
In addition to Google Apps, this agreement also enables MEEC member institutions—for example University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)—to license Google Postini Services such as Google Message Security, for use with the existing email infrastructure to enhance Spam filtering and email security for students, faculty and staff.
According to Assistant Vice President of IT at UMBC, Mike Carlin, students were overwhelmingly in favor of Google and vocal about their preference when it came to email since it “works exceptionally well with their mobile lifestyle.”
Posted by Miriam Schneider, Apps for Education Team
From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Geoff Greene join us here. Geoff is the Director of IT Support Services at Brown University, and here he shares an update on their campus-wide migration to Google Apps for Education for all students, staff and faculty. - Ed.
About a year ago we put our 6,000 undergraduate students on Google Apps. The results were phenomenal: people were happy, they were productive, they were excited...and then some people got jealous. Our faculty and staff members started coming to us asking “When do we get to go Google?” Turns out they also wanted access to the same tools to better connect and engage with students and with each other.
We thought about it for a bit and realized that they had a point. So we decided to bring the entire Brown University community together—faculty, staff, medical and grad students—with a common set of tools: Google Apps for Education. This summer, our Computing & Information Services team is in the process of migrating everyone to our new GoogleApps@Brown system. The positive experience our undergrads have had using the Apps suite helped our Provost David Kertzer decide that the change would bring significant benefits and cost savings to the university as a whole. In fact, we predict this change could save us somewhere around $1 million each year.
Our students were really the ones that led us down the Google path. They knew these tools would work because they already used them in their non-school lives. We also decided to go this direction because of the functionalities that we believe will bring our university together, namely tools like collaborative documents, better email (with nearly 30 times the storage space we had with our previous system!) and video chat.
The icing on the cake is that we signed a zero dollar contract for all these top-notch tools. But it’s not just about saving money—it’s also about investing in our university’s future. Google Apps helps us work better together, and we can feel the excitement building on campus as a result. Here’s a little glimpse:
Since some faculty and staff members aren’t as familiar with the new tools just yet, we also hosted a “roadshow” to spread the word and gear up training sessions tailored for each campus group or department. Our training efforts are robust (you can check it out at training.brown.edu) and we have Google Guides—enthusiastic staff and student volunteers—helping their peers with the transition. We feel confident that once people start using these tools together, they’ll never look back.
Posted by Geoff Greene, Brown University Computing & Information Services
