Google Apps for Education as a Fronter replacement.

[MrBitey]

Hi,
as a result of the cuts to the education budget in our LA, we are now faced with finding much more of our ICT-related money from the main school budget.

We need to make savings and I need to find areas to cut...

We currently have Fronter in our school and use it as our MLE and also to create and publish the school website.
It's pricey though and to be honest we don't really use all its features... (many of them are more appropriate for secondary I feel)...

So, I'd like to use Google Apps for Education to cover the Website (half of it is already built/hosted there) and to cover a basic MLE... I want children to have an area where their teachers can place links, information and news and where the pupils can upload work. I think this should be easily doable... particularly if we use the Google word processors etc.

Main thing would be - some sort of password access to keep the 'child only' part of the website separate from the public part and possibly some way of the children being
directed to an appropriate 'classroom' or year group area...

Anyone have any ideas? Anyone doing this? Is there a good place to go to get ideas and advice?

cheers in advance

Mr B

[CyberNerd]

We are 'sort of' doing this (secondary)
Google apps isn't a MLE/VLE replacement. It is fine for students building their own eportfolios, document storage, word processing, email, collaboration, photosharing, blogs etc etc.
You can publish documents/sites whoever you like, so it is simple to make sure only students can access it.
But it isn't so good as a learning environment per se. There are tonnes of features that you will miss from your MLE (perhaps not for primary....).
I would recommend a moodle installation and single sign on through moodle into Google apps. The two link together quite well and you get all the benefits of Google apps and Moodle.

[edutech4schools]

I am testing Google apps for education in some primary schools and so far so good. Get a domain that has dns editing, normally about £8 per year, setup Google and play.

[MrBitey]

Thanks for that...
do you have any good suggestions for good domain name hosts with dns editing that I could use?

cheers

MrB

[PaulAngelo]

Can I ask what you were paying? We are looking at Fronter as an added option.

[Advocate]

Have a look at this - Im going to this tomorrow, It's aimed at higher ed but I have to write a rough report to manager when I get back to will post it up here.
Google Apps for Education UK User Group (guug11) - Feb 15th
Google User Group delegates, see:
UCISA Cloud Computing Seminar - FULLY BOOKED

[Schoolsware]

We are currently conducting a research project into how schools are using Google Apps from an e-learning, collaboration and storage perspective - in both primary and secondary education. Although its early days, some very interesting findings are appearing. If any school would like to contribute their experiences towards this, or if you would like to see a copy of the report once published later in the year, please email info@schoolsware.co.uk