Why use live@edu or Google Apps for Education- discuss

[SimpleSi]

I can see that having someone else looking after email would be a great time/resource saver for ypu big boys and girls.

 

But as a Lancs primary with email hosted by the county ICT team, webspace supplied with PHP/MySQL and Moodle provided by CLEO what would be the practical benefits of using these services?

 

regards

Simon

[FN-GM]

We have ours hosted by capta now as apart of BSF but we did have it.

 

I like it becuase:

 

• Is free, no need to pay for:
  - Server Hardware
  - OS Licence
  - Exchange
  - Public IP Address
  - Backups
  - UPS and Electricity
  - Anti Spam Software
  
• Little management & maintance needed from Techies
  
• On a reliable conenction
  
• Lots of storage
  
• With Google apps webmail is not 'cut down' when you use anything other an IE like it is in OWA 2007
  
• Could be seen as more 'green'
  
• Removes possible concerns regarding network security
  

Edited February 17, 2011 by FN-GM
Typo

[Mr.Ben]

It depends what the organisation is like.

 

I have just completed moving my staff to Live@Edu, from RMEasymail and (for senior staff only) a LEA provided exchange address.

 

It offers to Staff - the ability to share calendars, inboxes, contacts, create groups of contacts, and add external contacts to our new Global address list. All things that could not be done with Easymail. Easymail calendars are rubbish I am afraid.

 

It offers our senior staff an easier way of communicating with our staff - they had most of the features above previously, but only between themselves.

 

We will also be using it to book resources that are 'Off Timetable' - Our conference rooms - Resource accounts and calendars can be created for this purpose.

 

As a small school with lots of staff and services that we provide to other schools it will be very useful.

Edited February 17, 2011 by Mr.Ben

[edutech4schools]

Both give children access to office apps for free from home.

[MK-2]

Both give children access to office apps for free from home.

 

are these office apps compatible with MS Office (apologies, i've never used either), or will the kids then be working on a doc at home that won't open or needs more software installed at school?

[AngryTechnician]

are these office apps compatible with MS Office (apologies, i've never used either), or will the kids then be working on a doc at home that won't open or needs more software installed at school?

 

SkyDrive creates Office documents by default, and Google Docs can save into Office formats with ease. Both have plugins available to integrate open/save in the Office desktop applications (in 2010, open/save to SkyDrive is built in).

[SimpleSi]

Both give children access to office apps for free from home.

 

OpenOffice does that

(And as every teacher believes that all computers come with MS Office on them... )

 

My moodle lets them download/upload from home (but needs to teacher to set up a course for pupils to do the uploading/downloading so a lot less effort to use cloud apps)

 

And only Y5/6 really use office type apps so less pupils benefit.

 

[edit]Didn't see above post[/edit]

And of course the downside that if docs are in the cloud - there's no backup available in school when our dns server/internet connection/Google goes down (until someone comes up a free cloud-local file sync service)

 

But a good point

 

Si

[gshaw]

It's an added extra to allow students to communicate and create \ edit work wherever they are with collaboration etc built in. Chances are you'll be able to give more space and be more flexible than a County IT system as well.

 

Either Live@Edu or Google come with blocks for Moodle that display email, very handy as students will see any messages in a single portal rather than logging into multiple places. There are a few things to watch out for when setting up the plugin but Google around and you'll find out all you need to know

 

If you use Google Apps and Moodle 2.0 you can seamlessly pull files into Moodle e.g. create a document in Google Docs then hand it in to an assignment activity in Moodle. Microsoft don't seem to be doing this at present but I live in hope that someone might make a plugin at some point.

[edutech4schools]

are these office apps compatible with MS Office (apologies, i've never used either), or will the kids then be working on a doc at home that won't open or needs more software installed at school?

 

Why not have a play, both are free.

 

TBH after I have 100% decided on a platform It will completely replace current system (desktop office) so all typing and saving is done in the cloud. I might have a few stations around that can pull local copies of backed up files just encase our internet goes down so staff can still work.

 

And of course the downside that if docs are in the cloud - there's no backup available in school when our dns server/internet connection/Google goes down (until someone comes up a free cloud-local file sync service)

Its free for each user to backup their own work. Not perfect but hay ho.

 

How much is it for the Google2Server sync?

[GrumbleDook]

Quick comment about free ... neither are free, they just do not have license costs. They do require time to set up, support and maintain. You should be looking how this compares with your existing provision to see if there is any change now and in the future.

[nadeem]

Check carefully where the data is stored with MS its in the EU (Dublin and Amsterdam), I could never get Google to give me a straight answer about this. This may affect how you considerr them in light of Data Protection.

[AngryTechnician]

Check carefully where the data is stored with MS its in the EU (Dublin and Amsterdam), I could never get Google to give me a straight answer about this. This may affect how you considerr them in light of Data Protection.

 

Google are compliant with US Safe Harbor regulations on data protection, which is a legal framework between the US and EU allowing companies to store data in the US while still complying with EU data protection laws. Therefore, neither they nor you are breaking the Data Protection Act by storing data on Google's servers, even if they are not in the EU.

 

Source: Google Apps

[KarlGoddard]

+1 on that

 

When I presented to SLT and teaching staff on the benefits of Moodle I never mentioned the word 'free'. Well except when I said Moodle was free to download.

 

It costs my college in the time I spent config'ing and setting up and the time I currently spend developing it. I must admit technical support is minimal as I spent ages last summer setting everything up and checking / testing / tweaking everything - nothing has gone wrong with it yet. A ball park figure for me would be 3 months work and therefor wage for the total project.

 

 

Quick comment about free ... neither are free, they just do not have license costs. They do require time to set up, support and maintain. You should be looking how this compares with your existing provision to see if there is any change now and in the future.

[CyberNerd]

It costs my college in the time I spent config'ing and setting up and the time I currently spend developing it. I must admit technical support is minimal as I spent ages last summer setting everything up and checking / testing / tweaking everything - nothing has gone wrong with it yet. A ball park figure for me would be 3 months work and therefor wage for the total project.

 

You make it sound like we'd get free support and top class engineers come in and configure something that we paid a license fee for. I don't remember MS sending people down to build our exchange servers when we had them... Sure add in setup costs. I've run exchange, Zimbra and older Unix mailservers and I can honestly say that Google Docs is easier to set up than any of them, and requires FAR less maintenance. live@edu probably is as well.

[nadeem]

Google are compliant with US Safe Harbor regulations on data protection, which is a legal framework between the US and EU allowing companies to store data in the US while still complying with EU data protection laws. Therefore, neither they nor you are breaking the Data Protection Act by storing data on Google's servers, even if they are not in the EU.

 

Source: Google Apps

 

I didn't say anything about the Data Protection *Act* - there are plenty of legal frameworks between the USA and UK/EU that aren't necessarily equal. For example there was huge debate recently with the HE community about a similar situtation whereby the legal advice was that for the UK side of the operation that irregardless of Safe Harbor had to be hosted on UK/EU servers. I was talking about Data Protection in general - for example as part of the the thinking I did about moving some email to Live@edu or Google was the issue of data not being on our servers at all.

[GrumbleDook]

I didn't say anything about the Data Protection *Act* - there are plenty of legal frameworks between the USA and UK/EU that aren't necessarily equal. For example there was huge debate recently with the HE community about a similar situtation whereby the legal advice was that for the UK side of the operation that irregardless of Safe Harbor had to be hosted on UK/EU servers. I was talking about Data Protection in general - for example as part of the the thinking I did about moving some email to Live@edu or Google was the issue of data not being on our servers at all.

 

If you have a problem with a company then no matter where they are you will always find a problem. If they have agreed to stick to a set of rules / laws then that is what they have agreed to stick with, no matter where the servers are. Often the legal advice is not centred around the data protection but linked to criminal investigation (can police get access if needed), ownership of assets (if we have a problems, and are owed money / compensation / etc, can we seize assets) and so on.

 

The move to stick data elsewhere is not so much linked to data protection for most people, but FoI, document retention schedules, archiving, etc. *Those* are the things that can cause headaches.

[nadeem]

If you have a problem with a company then no matter where they are you will always find a problem. If they have agreed to stick to a set of rules / laws then that is what they have agreed to stick with, no matter where the servers are. Often the legal advice is not centred around the data protection but linked to criminal investigation (can police get access if needed), ownership of assets (if we have a problems, and are owed money / compensation / etc, can we seize assets) and so on.

 

The move to stick data elsewhere is not so much linked to data protection for most people, but FoI, document retention schedules, archiving, etc. *Those* are the things that can cause headaches.

 

You put that so much better than I did - that's the kind of thing I meant.

[MK-2]

Just another question on it (I don't really want to try either as we have enough of a major project coming up!).

If the internet dies at the school, what can be achieved in lessons? Can documents still be accessed somehow, and can internal emails still be sent?

[edutech4schools]

Both systems have software for syncing with local server or users can choose to backup work / folders. Email would be a no no.

[AngryTechnician]

If the internet dies at the school, what can be achieved in lessons? Can documents still be accessed somehow, and can internal emails still be sent?

If uptime is your deciding factor, it really comes down to deciding which is likely to have a better uptime, your Internet connection or your internal mail server.

 

If you have a flaky connection, don't go to the cloud. If your connection almost never goes down, it may be a better option than keeping mail onsite - unless your SMT are the sort who care less about uptime stats and more about being able blame someone nearby and shout at them when things don't work.

 

For us, staff email is staying onsite for now. My Exchange server has so far been very reliable, and the vast majority of our staff email use in internal. I don't have any burning need to throw all of those 10MB+ attachments out to an external server and then have 100 copies downloaded back again.

[edutech4schools]

I am also keeping my old mail system but using the other elements that come with Google or @edu. Then at some point down the road I have the option to switch.

[hudzen76]

Looking really seriously at Google Apps; like the pitches of both 365 and Google but from what I can see Google will be cheaper route (plus as personal GMail and Apps user I may be biased) but still trying to get my head around the SSO side of things and email filtering/tracking/retention. Anybody using Postini additional service? Is it needed? Working with head of ICT who's starting to see potential of online shared documents plus presenting to head and assistant head next week so keen to line my ducks up....

[CyberNerd]

Looking really seriously at Google Apps; like the pitches of both 365 and Google but from what I can see Google will be cheaper route (plus as personal GMail and Apps user I may be biased) but still trying to get my head around the SSO side of things and email filtering/tracking/retention. Anybody using Postini additional service? Is it needed? Working with head of ICT who's starting to see potential of online shared documents plus presenting to head and assistant head next week so keen to line my ducks up....

 

Postini is really good, well worth having. Not only is Google the cheaper route, there are many more services integrated into google than 365. With things like secure data connector, app engine and visualization api you can do easily build your own services based on internal data (from SIMS) etc.

Our IT team are very keen on this, it has huge potential to change how (office) systems are used.

[edutech4schools]

secure data connector, app engine and visualization api you can do easily build your own services based on internal data (from SIMS)

 

Have you got any info / websites to start me off, especial Sims related. New to Google and trying to find my way around all the different non standard parts is a bit daunting.

[CyberNerd]

Have you got any info / websites to start me off, especial Sims related. New to Google and trying to find my way around all the different non standard parts is a bit daunting.

 

 

Google Secure Data Connector - Google Code

 

Google Chart Tools - Google Code

 

What Is Google App Engine? - Google App Engine - Google Code

 

edit : in relation to SIMS.

Google secure data connector imports XML into google apps. SIMS Commandreporter exports XML data. Publish this data to a webserver on SIMS and have the SDC pick it up. voila. Live SIMS data in Google ;-) ready for your appengine.