Google sites and apps for education info

[CyberNerd]

 

Its at this point a phone number would be very handy.

 

 

there is a number 0845 600 0278 - but you will need you customer PIN and support PIN - which you don't have until your either a paying or educational customer.

[CyberNerd]

yes, there is a verification procedure

 

also double and triple check all your MX records etc are working

[edutech4schools]

not set mx records only cname as the schools will not be using gmail externally.

 

How do they verify?

On the form they ask for Organization name, but anyone could fill this with a school name.

They don't ask for an address.

They do have the phone number.

I created a new domain using .net for the domain so its not a sch.uk domain. I have a few reasons for doing this. 1)My schools get free CC approved utils via the sch.uk address so cant be used for anything else. 2) I look after 4 schools so before they start using Google apps I need to sell it to them, and the only way to do this is create a working test system on a separate domain for them to see.

 

I did try the phone number above. They could do with an option for non verified users.

[CyberNerd]

not set mx records only cname as the schools will not be using gmail externally.

 

doesn't that rather defeat the point? how are you going to communicate with anyone?

I suggest you do fix the MX record, and then limit incoming/outgoing email using postini.

 

How do they verify?

.

 

sorry. I really don't remember. suffice to say our .org.uk domain was verified and google happily accepted us as an educational establishment about a week later.

[moriartythemundane]

The process is quite protracted and they do check out your school. You cannot rush through the system you have to do it in stages. These stages are notified to you at each point. It takes about 10 days overall to set up not ten minutes I am afraid. You always appear to be waiting for the next step to come along but trust me once its set up you wont look back.

I gave you my number in a pm so why dont you call and we can chat?

Moriarty...

[edutech4schools]

Google have sent through an email titled 'Sign-up confirmation and upgrading to Education Edition' so looks as though we might be on track.

[edutech4schools]

Not got the full Google education version but have been playing. I really like the sites part. very very easy to use and everyone gets their own website. This will be more than enough to replace our main website and possibly our VLE. Not so sure about the docs part as its so different from MS.

 

If I also joined to try out live@edu with the same domain but used another cname would this wipe out my Google Domain or can I run both systems side by side for testing?

[edutech4schools]

Just got upgraded. 'Welcome to Google Apps Education Edition! We have reviewed your application and are excited to upgrade your Google Apps account.'

 

Time to play

[edutech4schools]

Just tested live@edu and could only manage 20 mins before running back to Google. Might be just me but I am amazed at how badly MS have put it together as nothing really links together or flows. The only good thing is that office looks the same as the desktop version so users might like the look, but from both a usability and more importantly an administrators point of view I am not a fan.

 

I will give it another chance during the Christmas Hols and then create a new forum on the differences between these two services.

[gshaw]

As it stands the Google Apps do seem to flow more nicely and the Moodle integration is better (and that's from someone using Live@Edu \ Moodle integration in a live environment)

 

Thing is our core classes are all Microsoft based so it makes more sense for us at the moment... although had GMail had the conversation view disable setting this time last year I think we'd be in a very different place now!

[CyberNerd]

Just tested live@edu and could only manage 20 mins before running back to Google. Might be just me but I am amazed at how badly MS have put it together as nothing really links together or flows. The only good thing is that office looks the same as the desktop version so users might like the look, but from both a usability and more importantly an administrators point of view I am not a fan.

 

I found exactly the same thing when I looked at both of them last year. I'm still surprised though how many people have just gone along with @edu without really investigating the google option - which seems a far more robust product and has some really good MS integration with Office, AD etc.

[gshaw]

The main issue for a lot of people was that Google wouldn't commit to the data protection side of things whereas with Microsoft you know exactly where the data is at all times (apart from SkyDrive but that's made pretty clear when you sign up)

 

The co-branding, login speed and APIs are better on Google but MS does have the ties with Office documents... as seems to be the case with Microsoft these days it's a case of "so close, yet so far away"

[SimpleSi]

@edutech4schools

 

Thanks for going through all the pains of this on behalf of the rest of us

regards

Simon

[edutech4schools]

Thanks for noticing my pain SimpleSi. I am going to do some proper evaluation testing over the next month and will post my findings in a more detailed way, although they may be primary school biased as that's what I support.

[PiqueABoo]

I will give it another chance during the Christmas Hols and then create a new forum on the differences between these two services.

 

Thing is.. Live@Edu admin accounts got an e-mail in October about the move to "Office365 for Education" sometime(!) next year and more recently another e-mail giving advance notice about the phased roll-out of what look like some significant changes/enhancements (albeit *not* obviously the full OfE "business-lite" thing) to the service during Q1 next year. Plus, I know little about Google, but presume they won't be resting on their laurels either.

 

Not saying don't do it, but short of MS back-tracking on what appear to be solid plans for Q1, parts of any comparison you make will have a limited shelf life.. suspect you'll have to go back at perhaps 1/2 term to make it valid all over again. Similarly when the OfE shift eventually happens (that seems very significant to me).

[CyberNerd]

Thing is.. Live@Edu admin accounts got an e-mail in October about the move to "Office365 for Education" sometime(!) next year and more recently another e-mail giving advance notice about the phased roll-out of what look like some significant changes/enhancements (albeit *not* obviously the full OfE "business-lite" thing) to the service during Q1 next year. Plus, I know little about Google, but presume they won't be resting on their laurels either.

 

From what I've heard about 365 - much of it is payed extras from Microsoft, integrating things like sharepoint etc. Google apps doesn't sit still either, but most of the paid extras are for integrating third party apps, the core google stuff is free.

[PiqueABoo]

From what I've heard about 365 - much of it is payed extras from Microsoft,

 

Such as?

 

There were enough docs and blurb released in Oct and beyond to give us a reasonable idea about what the free "core stuff" for OfE will be. We know what we have now. We know what MS have announced, albeit at a vague level, for the aforementioned Q1 updates to the existing service. I guess it depends on your definition of "core", but by my definition the "core stuff" is free[1]

 

[1] Ignoring whatever anyone thinks about the cost of MS, or Google or anyone else assimilating the troposphere.

[mrweekender]

365 is just another bandwagon Microsoft are jumping on after seeing Google take education by storm. Google Apps is by far the best cloud collaboration platform available to schools at this time and the price isn't bad either - free. Don't believe the FUD, 365 is just another way of Microsoft to steal our budgets at a time when we could all do with a few freebies to keep things ticking over. I've been using Google Apps from the start and I can wholeheartedly recommend it as a service. Sign up for Postini before the 31st of December and get some free industry standard security addons that will help with Data Protection and content control. Cheers.

[PiqueABoo]

Don't believe the FUD, 365 is just another way of Microsoft to steal our budgets at a time when we could all do with a few freebies to keep things ticking over

 

FUD seems a teensy bit ironic here: Please explain in less casual terms how this is stealing our budgets..

 

No one pays anything besides time=money for Live@Edu and I don't see where you'll have to pay anything more for the OfE equivalents. If I wanted to pick on it I'd start talking about something like "light editing" of documents implying a need to keep paying for a "heavy" editor, or how easy it will or won't be to get your data out of an MS (or anyone else's) cloud etc.

[mrweekender]

FUD seems a teensy bit ironic here: Please explain in less casual terms how this is stealing our budgets..

 

No one pays anything besides time=money for Live@Edu and I don't see where you'll have to pay anything more for the OfE equivalents. If I wanted to pick on it I'd start talking about something like "light editing" of documents implying a need to keep paying for a "heavy" editor, or how easy it will or won't be to get your data out of an MS (or anyone else's) cloud etc.

 

Nothing ironic at all. Microsoft are about 4 years behind Google with cloud applications yet as always they sell their version like it's the holy grail. All you have to do is take a quick look at their marketing info.

 

Tag lines like "Works with the programs students know and use most – Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote" hmmm if that's not attempting to tie schools into continuing to buy the Microsoft Office products I don't know what is.

 

Also "co-branded for your school at no cost." co-branded - sounds like advertising to me. No adverts or "co-branding" in Google Apps.

 

As my old mentor used to say we should be teaching word processing skills not word skills, spreadsheet skills not excel skills. Openness is the future, docx etc. is most certainly not. Does 365 support ODF? Google does.

 

I believe Microsoft is not the future where schools are concerned, their 80's style mercenary business model is hard to stomach these days especially when there are far better offers on the table.

[SimpleSi]

their 80's style mercenary business model is hard to stomach these days especially when there are far better offers on the table.

 

As much as I like bashing MS and the fact that I use OpenOffice on all my curriculum computers across 7 schools (except the one where the head insisted on buying MS) the pricing of their office package is now quite reasonable (£33/machine in my case) whereas 8 years ago it was £66/machine)

 

IMHO, that sort of price differential - compared to free with OpenOffice/GoogleApps etc pretty much matches the ease of use/features of a client installed Office Suite.

 

I choose to push free software to get the maximum out of our school budgets but every teacher I know would prefer it if we had MS Office but usually they accept that its not worth paying 15% of the price of a netbook just to make life a bit easier for themselves

 

 

regards

Simon

[mrweekender]

the pricing of their office package is now quite reasonable (£33/machine in my case)

Simon

 

That's £24,288 for us and if that's annual then I'm sorry but Microsoft can shove it because that translates to about 70 iPads/Chrome Netbooks every year with no licensing costs and everything flowing through the cloud.

[localzuk]

Also "co-branded for your school at no cost." co-branded - sounds like advertising to me. No adverts or "co-branding" in Google Apps.

 

You mean google apps for education doesn't have the Google logo on it anywhere? I highly doubt that...

[mrweekender]

You mean google apps for education doesn't have the Google logo on it anywhere? I highly doubt that...

 

Oh yes sorry it's an image 54px - 24px right at the bottom of the email page - it's tiny. After all it is called Google Apps. The Main logo is our own and there are no adverts. I know hard to believe isn't it?

 

Microsoft co-branded - oh please more like Bill Gates has finally run out of ideas for making money so he's just going to sell advertising space in an education platform and brainwash our kids even further. And I didn't think Microsoft could sink any lower!

[edutech4schools]

I must admit it was all the extra clutter on the live@edu that is putting me off almost as much as the administration of the system. Google does have some minor issues from an admin stand point, although MS seem to have more, but at least the google pages are very clean with nothing extra, which from a primary school perspective is a must.

 

Live@Edu admin accounts got an e-mail in October about the move to "Office365 for Education" sometime(!) next year and more recently another e-mail giving advance notice about the phased roll-out of what look like some significant changes/enhancements

 

Can someone send me or point me to a list of these significant changes, so I can take it into account.