Google Apps

[harvester]

Hi All

 

I was wondering if any one is using Google Apps in their schools? Inparticular Google mail, I am considderiing using Google Mail for our email domain & connecting with Outlook. (Google has released an Exchange to GMAIL deployment tool).

 

Has/is anyone using GMail for their main school messageing system?

 

Thanks:confused:

[ajs]

I used it for about 2 years plus at my previous school.

 

There were a couple of glitches, especially when IE7 was released and Google had issues with attachments and temporary files, but they were mostly sorted by the time I left.

 

On the whole it worked quite well, but then we were moving from a setup that only allowed the admin staff to have email. They were the only ones who had real trouble moving over since they were used to Exchange/Outlook.

 

Other than that, it was the same problems that I'm sure lots of other edugeekers have come across: staff not sending emails to the correct list and spamming the entire school instead. etc etc ;-)

 

Personally, from an administration standpoint, I'd probably have preferred to go with Exchange but if your budget is limited (as mine was) then it was certainly a good move.

[f2mke]

Have a look re Google Apps and an integrated learning platform... http://www.edugeek.net/forums/virtual-learning-platforms/62362-google-apps-integrated-learning-platform-released-google-marketplace.html#post561122

 

PS Yes - Rolling out Google Apps for Education (same as professional version with no ads, etc...) to over 450 schools / 130,000 users. Going very well so far!

[kimclayton]

Hi

I am just considering Google Apps for education and the Microsoft Live@edu as alternative to the current provision from County, how did Norfolk arrive at the decision that GooGle Apps was the better option?

[plexer]

Norfolk has rolled out Google to all the schools in Norfolk.

 

Ben

[plexer]

They licked their finger and stuck it in the air

 

Ben

[zag]

Interesting, how do people get the email to auto log in from the desktop?

 

Exchange does this nicely but I'm not sure its possible with google mail and mandatory profiles.

[plexer]

They don't the google mail accounts we have are based upon a rbc unique id for every member of staff and pupil which is different to their network login.

 

Ben

[jcrewe]

I have Apps at my school and (almost) everything works great. Easy to set up and to manage groups of users (new functionality this year).

I recommend it highly for simplicity's sake. I have 50 users and for free it's great along with a decent support base in the forums.

 

I say 'almost' because after I installed Postini it continues to block a lot of list serve mail I receive but gives me a nice 'Quarantine summary' daily to users so they can get their messages delivered. Also the footer on outbound messages doesn't play nice with IE (any version) as the text refused to line break when viewed in IE...safari, firefox and chrome are fine.

[f2mke]

Hi

I am just considering Google Apps for education and the Microsoft Live@edu as alternative to the current provision from County, how did Norfolk arrive at the decision that GooGle Apps was the better option?

 

Hi Kim - Norfolk went through a comprehensive evaluation of both Live@Edu and Google Apps for Education, against a detailed statement of requirements and several supplier workshops. Google came the closest to meeting all requirements. I'm sure that you can get a more detailed insight by contacting ICT Solutions / Advisory Service.

[f2mke]

They don't the google mail accounts we have are based upon a rbc unique id for every member of staff and pupil which is different to their network login.

 

Ben

 

Hi - the Norfolk (RBC) ID is designed to be used as an alternative to your LDAP / AD login should you wish. Some high schools have already successfully implemented this. Google supports SAML and thus Shibboleth going forward. Account provisioning is via SIF - we have a Google SIF AGent

[f2mke]

They licked their finger and stuck it in the air

 

Ben

 

All stakeholders were involved in the comprehensive evaluation process including representatives (teachers and students) from schools.

[plexer]

Considering he is from somewhere in Suffolk, then ICT Solutions or the Advisory probably won't speak to him directly or he won't know how to contact them.

 

Granted you were not to know that he doesn't appear to be from a Norfolk school.

 

Thanks.

 

Ben

[plexer]

Hi - the Norfolk (RBC) ID is designed to be used as an alternative to your LDAP / AD login should you wish. Some high schools have already successfully implemented this. Google supports SAML and thus Shibboleth going forward. Account provisioning is via SIF - we have a Google SIF AGent

 

Yes I gather that is the case from talking to some people and with sif integration creation of my AD accounts should be easier as I can use the spreadsheet generated from this process to provide the information for my onsite provisioning of AD accounts, my only reservation is at the moment it's easier for us to find a user based on their year as we prefix their username with their year of entry. I suppose I could provision using their RBC ID but also prefix it with their year of entry.

 

All stakeholders were involved in the comprehensive evaluation process including representatives (teachers and students) from schools.

 

Yes I know that I was jesting I would also be keen to see a matrix matching the solutions to the requirements, is this available?

 

Thanks.

 

Ben

[CyberNerd]

Hi - the Norfolk (RBC) ID is designed to be used as an alternative to your LDAP / AD login should you wish. Some high schools have already successfully implemented this. Google supports SAML and thus Shibboleth going forward. Account provisioning is via SIF - we have a Google SIF AGent

 

Cound you give some more details about the Google SIF agent please. We currently provision all of our accounts through an overnight Active Directory Sync and then authenticate directly to AD via our Learning Platform.

[jonspurs]

Hey,

We're looking at Google Mail but wondering how you've implemented LDAP authentication? We're using CC3 / 2003.

Cheers,

Jon

[CyberNerd]

There are stacks of single sign on services to LDAP/AD.

Google Apps - Google Code

 

We use this for single sign on authentication: moodle-google - Project Hosting on Google Code as it uses our learning platform

 

The LDAP sync tool will synchronise other (non-password, for AD) info

Google Apps Directory Sync - Google Apps Help

[jonspurs]

Thanks CyberNerd.

We've asked a few Google Partners about LDAP, that we want passwords to be synced, and they were talking of using:

 

http://code.google.com/p/sha1hexfltr/

 

Anyone else use this?

 

If we were to use SSO, and one day the SSO server goes down, that means Gmail/Moodle/etc wouldn't be accessible, right?

 

The Moodle-Google looks cool. Does it create a new account when users first login? Or how?

 

Cheers,

Jon

[CyberNerd]

 

If we were to use SSO, and one day the SSO server goes down, that means Gmail/Moodle/etc wouldn't be accessible, right?

 

The Moodle-Google looks cool. Does it create a new account when users first login? Or how?

 

Cheers,

Jon

 

 

Yes - the SSO server would be a single point of failure (as would an exchange server). Of course you can work around this with redundancy.

For us the Moodle-Google is just a Single Sign on Mechanism, with a link to 'email' in the moodle page. I think there is an option to create google accounts, but we don't use that. We use a scheduled Active Directory sync to create accounts/groups etc.

[jonspurs]

Sorry, the SSO server is the Moodle server right? So when your users want to get to their email, they go to your moodle server, eg moodle.yourschool.com, log in, and get to Gmail from there. And if you go directly to Gmail, eg, gmail.yourschool.com, users will be redirected to the moodle server right? Just thinking we'd need to upgrade our moodle server if we're going to have users all hitting the moodle server just for email...

 

Cheers,

Jon

[CyberNerd]

Sorry, the SSO server is the Moodle server right? So when your users want to get to their email, they go to your moodle server, eg moodle.yourschool.com, log in, and get to Gmail from there. And if you go directly to Gmail, eg, gmail.yourschool.com, users will be redirected to the moodle server right? Just thinking we'd need to upgrade our moodle server if we're going to have users all hitting the moodle server just for email...

 

Cheers,

Jon

 

yep. That pretty much sums it up.

The load on moodle is negligible for just serving one page and an auth - you may not need to upgrade it.

[MrJon]

Im not looking at Google Apps, just the Spam and AV module Postini - Is anyone using this in anger? What are the Pro's and Cons please?

[harvester]

Did not really check out Goole Apps very much but implemented Live@edu (MS solution). We're just using it for email not the sky drive or office online.

 

The spam filtering is ok but were are getting more spam than we used to especially from Nigeria!! There is spam filtering tools with Live@edu that we have had good to limited success with. Overall for a free email system it suits are need.

[CyberNerd]

Im not looking at Google Apps, just the Spam and AV module Postini - Is anyone using this in anger? What are the Pro's and Cons please?

 

Yes. The postini service is fantastic and very flexible. We use it for both content filtering and spam filtering.

The only drawback I would say is that it's another external service and the initial setup is a bit complex. Fine once you get your head around it though.

[MrJon]

Good news - have you setup the TLS etc - shame it does just run via the SMTP username?