p3t3r Posted July 2, 2015 Posted July 2, 2015 We have done GAfE O365. Our primary platform for collaboration is Google and the focus is on the teaching and learning side. The only reason we done O365 was for the Student Advantage for Office and so we turned off all the other functionality. Google was definitely the quickest and easiest to setup. I also think that it is simpler from the users perspective. The big advantage is that it opens up the use of Chromebooks! We have had good feedback so far from our users so far.
thebyronic Posted July 2, 2015 Posted July 2, 2015 I have seen several posts on Google Apps for Education (GAfE) and Microsoft Office 365 (O365) but I haven't found one comparing the two platforms, please forgive me if I have overlooked one. I am the IT Network manager for a large secondary school in South Wales and we are in the very early stages of investigating the undeniably important task of selecting a cloud platform for the school. I am by no means a Microsoft fan-boy or a Google fan-boy, although I have a huge dis-likening to anything 'Apple'. Some of you may know that in Wales the government are promoting the use of a platform that they have built, it's called Hwb and is based around Microsoft SharePoint and O365. Despite spending several weeks trying to get to grips with the Hwb system I have come to the conclusion that it is very slow, very 'clunky' and not very user friendly, which results in a poor user experience. So I decided to look at alternative platforms that could offer us cloud storage and a suitable VLE. After reading several articles on the topic I decided to give GAfE a try; needless to say I was amazed at how easy the platform was to setup and very excited about the potential of the platform for the school. As I said I am not a Google fan-boy so I am happy to concede that certain apps within GAfE lack some polish. But we are a school, we don't require a corporate style professional polish to our apps, we just need them to work well and we need them to be easy to use for all pupils regardless of age and ability. However, Google is not Microsoft; and Microsoft seems to have a 'hold' over educational institutions (at least here in the UK). Senior Staff are [understandably] nervous about 'going Google'. I am stunned by arguments such as, "Estyn have said we must use Microsoft Office". Surely all schools should be using a platform that works the best for them, that offers their pupils the best experience, and that has the most potential. It is absurd to allow one company to have a monopoly over all schools in Wales, moreover it is narrow-minded. So I am left with the task of battling with SLT to try and convince them that GAfE has a better offering than O365; or I can plod on with struggling to develop a system that I know, for us at least, will not offer us the same potential for growth, collaboration and pupil engagement. Has anyone else been in the same situation I now find myself in? How can I make SLT realise the potential struggles ahead if we go for O365? I have read so many horror stories about complicated setups, and time consuming maintenance. In my experience of GAfE, it 'just works'! Thanks. Good decision regarding the hwb. I agree, very clunky and slow! Just hope management don't take to it too much, it being 'free' -_- We use O365 here anyway and find it brilliant! Compared to our old exchange!
welshman Posted July 2, 2015 Author Posted July 2, 2015 Thanks for all the replies so far, it's greatly appreciated. I'm glad others share my frustration with Hwb. I think I'll run both for a while and see which plarform staff gravitate to. However to fully harness the potential of either platform I think requires more or less 100% loyalty to that platform. I just hope that I can convince SLT to give it a fair shot and put their fears of leaving Microsoft behind them because I know that when they are able to fully appreciate the potential of GAfE they'll wonder why they were ever worried.
Marshall_IT Posted July 2, 2015 Posted July 2, 2015 My worry with going with Google had been is propensity to go with something then just drop it, like YouTube education.
ellsandell Posted July 2, 2015 Posted July 2, 2015 My worry with going with Google had been is propensity to go with something then just drop it, like YouTube education. That was one of my fears to. Atleast with office 365 - the education offering is part of their wider commercial offerings. Continued development is another - theres not a week goes by where they announce a new or improved feature.
AndrewTechGuy Posted July 7, 2015 Posted July 7, 2015 I think it all comes down to what improves education and what the teachers and the pupils will get best functionality out of it. We have been working closely with Google to push this out to schools in our authority. What we have found is it all depends on the software and if the teachers are willing to embrace a change for the better. For certain applications that need a windows solution we have created a hybrid solution to best use the technology. But like most things it is a work in progress and GAFE is constantly changing and adding new features. All you need to do is show a teacher the benefits of a chromebook and classroom and they will be sold.
rickjames Posted July 7, 2015 Posted July 7, 2015 At the risk of sounding completely thick with 0365; do people with it have that alongside Office 2013, or is O365 functionality enough for your teaching staff/pupils?
CyberNerd Posted July 7, 2015 Posted July 7, 2015 At the risk of sounding completely thick with 0365; do people with it have that alongside Office 2013, or is O365 functionality enough for your teaching staff/pupils? If you want O365 to have similar functionality to GAFE you'll need Office and Sharepoint and a heap of powershell experience. O365 is more of a hook, GAFE is a product in its own right. 1
rickjames Posted July 7, 2015 Posted July 7, 2015 Ta. We don't have O365 and not sure if we'll go down that road anytime soon. Have GAFE setup and everything, but with the exception of a teacher trialling Classroom and one sole Chromebook haven't done anything...
rickjames Posted July 7, 2015 Posted July 7, 2015 Ta. We don't have O365 and not sure if we'll go down that road anytime soon. Have GAFE setup and everything, but with the exception of a teacher trialling Classroom and one sole Chromebook haven't done anything...
edutech4schools Posted July 7, 2015 Posted July 7, 2015 My worry with going with Google had been is propensity to go with something then just drop it, like YouTube education. The core apps that you signup to use will never be removed (it does list this somewhere) but they can play around with the apps listed as additional. I look after a number of primary schools, our local authority did not even consider GAFE for the schools and rammed Office 365 in to all the school. I decided to give all my school a demo of GAFE and they all decided it would be a much better option.
CapnPugwash Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 This might sound like a really daft question but... what email spam /malware protection does GAFe have? One of the things about O365 E1 (Free version) is that Exchange Online Protection is bundled with it
CyberNerd Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 This might sound like a really daft question but... what email spam /malware protection does GAFe have? One of the things about O365 E1 (Free version) is that Exchange Online Protection is bundled with it Luckily Google have got some pretty good search capabilities in their tech portfolio, so they bundled malware/spamware detection into their gmail apps. They also bought postini which gives free content filtering, backups, security and auditing. It's been bundled with GAFE since about 2011. 1
CapnPugwash Posted July 23, 2015 Posted July 23, 2015 Just started having a play. Set up GaFE and O365 E1 sites & have started to add test users. Hit my first snag with GaFE, verified my domain (myschool.sch.uk) & initially had trouble because the test users were given a @myschool.sch.uk email address - EEK! Put in a support request and was quite surprized when a Google tech person rang me and talked me through setting up an alias for emails / testing. Must have been on the phone for thirty minutes, quality tech support. Looking at O365, first problem is syncing OneDrive with staff / student areas... dunno if the same issue exists for GaFe but this is (on first glance) a biggie - we don't really want all our data to be only in the cloud. Networked home drives mean people can keep working if the internet falls over & we have total control over backups/restoring files and archiving data... Anyone managed to work round this? Am I being too 'old school'?
NotSoFast Posted July 23, 2015 Posted July 23, 2015 No one has got this working in GAFE either, unless there's been progress since it was last discussed on Edugeek.
SovietRussia Posted July 23, 2015 Posted July 23, 2015 Some of you may know that in Wales the government are promoting the use of a platform that they have built, it's called Hwb and is based around Microsoft SharePoint and O365. Despite spending several weeks trying to get to grips with the Hwb system I have come to the conclusion that it is very slow, very 'clunky' and not very user friendly, which results in a poor user experience. So I decided to look at alternative platforms that could offer us cloud storage and a suitable VLE. I know what you mean - Hwb for us, has been certainly interesting. The admin bit of it is truly god awful and it's so slow!
CapnPugwash Posted July 23, 2015 Posted July 23, 2015 No one has got this working in GAFE either, unless there's been progress since it was last discussed on Edugeek. Oh, that's interesting... how are you O365/GaFE users organising your user data? What about backups etc?
psydii Posted July 23, 2015 Posted July 23, 2015 Drive / SkyDrive / Dropbox et al should not ever be mapped to 'documents' in a Windows domain environment. It either hurts login on times, or runs the risk of the various cross - system synching conflicts/ unpredictable behaviour. If you can go 1:1 on your devices it's great and could replace network documents. Otherwise they are both additional places to store files, adding complexity to what was once a simple system. If you can go 1:1 and have an existing Veeam instance, their endpoint backup tool maybe the answer to the backup question.
CyberNerd Posted July 23, 2015 Posted July 23, 2015 ^ to add; whichever way you look syncing docs to cloud can become a massive PITA. As soon as someone logs onto another system it just syncs their data to the local system and add HUGE bandwidth to your cloud provider. We briefly got GAFE syncing from the server, but even that was hit and miss. I'm sure it is possible to do server side correctly but unless you're good with Google's API (python, Go, Java) you'll need to use a third party tool. It's much easier to have a cloud only strategy if you can get a reasonable broadband service in your area. I'm certain it is the way things will go long term, as less people need on-site storage arrays, the more they will go up in cost. At the moment it's debatable for some, in future it will be a no-brainer.
ass17 Posted July 23, 2015 Posted July 23, 2015 We use both, from a schools point of view o365 is free and offers the best office editing tools on multi-platforms, but Google has better collaboration. Because both are free just have them both.
CapnPugwash Posted August 6, 2015 Posted August 6, 2015 We use both, from a schools point of view o365 is free and offers the best office editing tools on multi-platforms, but Google has better collaboration. Because both are free just have them both. I think we may go down that path as well. How hard is it to manage the two systems, side by side? Have you had many issues/hickups? I'm anticipating that we will move our email to one or the other & get rid of our Exchange server If we move our email to O365, staff and students would have two email addresses - the school email address @ourschool.co.uk and the Google address... they both can't use the same address? Can we use the AD sync tools for both products at the same time?
thekiddy Posted August 11, 2015 Posted August 11, 2015 Does anyone just use One Drive and / or GDrive and allow Primary children to have personal accounts??
ass17 Posted August 11, 2015 Posted August 11, 2015 They have them but don't we don't advertise it to them
thekiddy Posted August 11, 2015 Posted August 11, 2015 Ok. What do they logon with if its not an email address. Is the allocated username not also email? Thanks.
jmak Posted August 11, 2015 Posted August 11, 2015 Does anyone just use One Drive and / or GDrive and allow Primary children to have personal accounts?? Yes - limited use so far and I haven't enabled email (yet) Ok. What do they logon with if its not an email address. Is the allocated username not also email? Thanks. Both have built in AD Sync/federation. I'm using RM Unify as a single sign on currently only Google Apps deployed, but I have the option of deploying Office 365 through the same platform. Probably best not to give them the Google Apps email address as login if you're not going to be using the email function. 1
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