Google Apps implementation

[Susan Smith]

I am planning to pilot Google Apps to our 5th grade students this fall. Does anyone have experience with an implementation?

If you are planning an implementation and want company I would like to collaborate with you during our pilots. At this point I am doing research and developing a proposal to be approved by our academic technology committee.

[Peter Evans]

We currently offer Google Apps to our entire 6th - 12th grades. This includes email, calendar, docs and talk. The students have been using it since the start of the new year and they definitely seems to like it.

We have found a few bugs with the interface and Google Support has been easy to contact and communicate with. Take a look at our Start Page and ;et me know if you have any more questions.

http://start.students.fwparker.org

-Peter Evans

[Carol Sukoneck]

Peter,
Your startpage looks very neat and clean. We are experimenting now with Google Apps to implement next Fall. This would relieve the Tech Dept from maintaining our own mail server and address some of the email issues faculty have brought to light.

Although you have setup the start page for your students and faculty, are they able to customize the page themselves or do you have the ability to keep the page as you set it.

So far my experience with the Apps system has been very positive. We have been using the calendar system since September and have had an excellent experience. It is nice to finally have all the school calendars in one place.

Would you share with me some of the bugs you have come across? There have been times when the calendar is unable to be updated quickly but that has been on rare occassions.

~Carol Sukoneck

[Susan Smith]

I to am interested in start page customization. I would like out teachers to have the capability, but limit our students to the features as we roll them out. I have had little time to experiment but it looks like the start page is customizable with the ability to keep the first column of the page fixed.

[Carol Sukoneck]

Susan,
As we were trying out Gmail we experimented with the start page. We eventually abandoned the use of the start page. The reason were the widgets. As I created the start page I added many useful tools for faculty and students to use. However there was no way to lock down the start page to prevent students and faculty from adding inappropriate widgets.

I have since been working with protopage (http://protopage.com) which has less widgets to choose from but can be restricted so no additional widgets can be added. There is also a setup for Gmail so you can view incoming mail right from protopage.

We have rolled out Gmail for faculty this week and everyone seems to be quite pleased with the new program. We have been using the calendar program for all school calendars since September. Google Docs will be next and the students will get their Gmail accounts when they return in September.

[Lisa Sjogren]

Carol,

I can tell you about one bug (and it is more of an annoyance than anything else) we have run into. We wanted students to be able to view a spreadsheet and sort the spreadsheet. However, if multiple students are viewing the spreadsheet at a time, they are unable to sort the data individually and it sorts for all viewers.

--Lisa

[Drew Forsberg]

We are seriously considering implementing this school wide next year. We have decided that it is time to get rid of First Class Email. I would also be interested in any experiences that schools have had . Your start page looks good Peter.

[Sarah Hanawald]

Interesting--I've been dabbling with Google Apps, but just a little. I'm interested in trying more. Drew, I'm curious as to why your school feels it is "time to get rid of First Class?" While I use gmail for my personal mail, I can't imagine wanting to give up FC at school. What makes you feel this way?

Thanks!

[Drew Forsberg]

We have a couple main issues. First of all is the calendar system, it is generally disliked and our administrators have had a horrible time syncing it. Also the way the groups work does not serve us the way we would like it to (not sure google will either). Also we have found it to be pretty buggy, we have a lot of slow downs, and a few crashes which the good people at first class have not been great to respond to. We have close to 1000 users, and would love to let Alums, parents and whatnot have some type of access, but are hesitant to add more with current system. We have not had any luck getting imap to work with it. I am currently Department chair of the Technology, so now it is not really my problem, but I just accepted the position of Director of Information Technology, so July 1, it will be. We may not change but, are looking for alternatives.

[David Branson]

Drew, can you tell me if you did go ahead with this transition to google apps from first class? If you did, can you tell me how you handled migration of mailboxes and conferences?

Much appreciated

[Matt Montagne]

Hey Drew,

What did you decide to do here?? Did you end up going with google apps for your school in lieu of first class??

Thanks,
Matt

[Jan Schulz]

I use Google Docs with my 4th graders for language arts mostly. They type what they are writing into Google Apps and then the neat part is they can share their document and then two students sit side by side and edit together each on their own computer. One highlights errors in color. When the other student refreshes it shows up on his/her screen and can make revisions. They also share with me so I can make more suggestions before it's published or graded. We've also set it up to share with parents. I hope to learn a lot more so I can implement it even further. This is just a beginning for me.

Jan Schulz
[e-mail]

[Sarah Hanawald]

Jan--

I really like the sound of what you are doing. I can think of some ways to use Google Apps with reading comprehension strategies too. Do all of your 4th graders have google accounts, or are you using some kind of created login? If they do have accounts, do they have school-issued email addresses? Our elementary students teachers are now interested in using Google Docs, but I can't find a way around having each student create a Google account, and we don't give them email addresses until 6th grade.

Thanks!
Sarah