zag Posted January 25, 2012 Posted January 25, 2012 I found this piece of software that can sync active directory groups to live@edu, could be an alternative to ILM. Sysint - easySync Very interesting!!!! Wish that was available when we launched...
drewp Posted January 25, 2012 Posted January 25, 2012 Very interesting!!!! Wish that was available when we launched... I know Live@edu is giving a lot for free but, if something like that was part of the live@edu package it would be great! It’s about £500 which is not expensive if it does what it says it does... is anyone using it, or can anyone willing to give it a try
CyberNerd Posted January 25, 2012 Posted January 25, 2012 I know Live@edu is giving a lot for free but, if something like that was part of the live@edu package it would be great! It’s about £500 which is not expensive if it does what it says it does... is anyone using it, or can anyone willing to give it a try It is kind of expensive given that the google one is free, so are their office apps and all the other features that google have that live@edu doesn't. Just keeping the thread back on topic.
edutech4schools Posted January 25, 2012 Posted January 25, 2012 I know its down to personal preference but I just don't get why a school would be going down the MS road when you have a set of tools (google) that imho are years ahead, does more and is completely free. Please don't say its because word on-line looks the same as the desktop version (as someone in another forum had) or something like that as that's a pants reason.
zag Posted January 25, 2012 Posted January 25, 2012 It is kind of expensive given that the google one is free, so are their office apps and all the other features that google have that live@edu doesn't. Just keeping the thread back on topic. Yeh totally agree. We went with Live@edu because we wanted to go the Microsoft route with easy AD integration and a common interface. It turned out that the AD integration was actually much better with google apps. If I had the choice again I would go with Google Apps due to it being free and integrating better. Thats not to say we are not happy with Live@edu. It just seems like a product that was designed for bigger universities, not schools.
jamesbmarshall Posted January 25, 2012 Posted January 25, 2012 According to this page Office web apps costs 2$ a month for students and 14$ a month for staff. Students get the Office Web Apps free, as shown in the diagram - the $2 per month charge is only if you want add a full copy of Microsoft Office that users can install on their PCs.
PiqueABoo Posted January 25, 2012 Posted January 25, 2012 (edited) Well google apps for education has a simple Active directory sync. Microsofts way of doing this (Using ILM or FIM) is a joke really and in no way suited to primary, secondary or small organizations. Fair enough, MS's "throw another box at it" enterprise approach to nearly everything is a complete PITA in Education world, especially when folk dutifully do that and by-and-by end up with enough servers to run a small planet. I'm certain that basic syncing could be done with some relatively small code running on one DC, which I assume is the story for Google? Anyone with it care to comment on how much code there is for that, it's resource requirements etc.? It’s about £500 which is not expensive if it does what it says it does... Hmm.. maybe I should write one and sell it for £250. I've made lots of AD enumerating/fiddling code, I've made some serious code that's long been doing powershell remoting to Live@Edu (and not relevant but yet more doing EWS to fiddle with mailbox content) it's just the bit in the middle that missing.. would be relatively easy, but rather tedious to write the delta finding/fixing stuff. -- What's really stopped me bothering is powershell. You can open a 2008 R2 AD powershell console, use it to connect to Live@Edu and then use output from the AD cmdlets as input for Live@Edu/Exchange cmdlets. Quick example one-liner: get-aduser -filter {Name -like 'test*'} | % {get-mailbox $_.SamAccountName} That gets a bunch of users[1] from AD and on the Live@Edu side lists their mailboxes[2]. Perhaps it's just me, but this kind of thing is **more fun** than some app with a GUI. Won't sync your passwords though, but there's nothing else I can imagine wanting to do that should be a problem. [1] Whose Names begin with "test" [2] Assumes we created the Live@Edu accounts with samAccountName in one of the several fields that get matched by that particular get-mailbox command. Edited January 25, 2012 by PiqueABoo get-mailbox checked-> matched
drewp Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 I agree that I might have only been talking about live@edu earlier in this thread, but the school I work at has not yet decided which path to go down. I agree that there will be personal preference between Google Apps for Education and live@edu, but shouldn't the decision be made on what best suits the schools requirements? If you decided to use Google Apps for Education have you allowed your pupils/staff to use SkyDrive and vice versa? I know that the Google Apps Directory Sync has no costs and, ILM has its licencing/hardware costs. The Sysint easySync software may be a better choice for a school that wanted to use live@edu, perhaps live@edu will one day will have a simpler AD Sync tool that matches Google’s offering... @PiqueABoo Here is a link to the Google Apps Directory Sync page Google Apps Directory Sync - Google Apps Help
clarky2k3 Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 I found this piece of software that can sync active directory groups to live@edu, could be an alternative to ILM. Sysint - easySync How did you buy it? Is there an english reseller?
drewp Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 How did you buy it? Is there an english reseller? We are not using live@edu or Google Apps for Education. We have not brought nor are we using the easySync software. There are some other threads that mention the easySync software, they may be able to help further http://www.edugeek.net/forums/south-west-grid-learning-swgfl/86147-live-edu-anyone-got-working.html http://www.edugeek.net/forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/85692-easysync-configurator-cannot-sync-network-live-edu.html
CyberNerd Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 I agree that there will be personal preference between Google Apps for Education and live@edu, but shouldn't the decision be made on what best suits the schools requirements? If you decided to use Google Apps for Education have you allowed your pupils/staff to use SkyDrive and vice versa? I'd be hard pushed to see a reason why any school would choose live@edu over google apps unless they really didn't look at the full features of google apps and just assumed that @edu would fit better into their MS world. We do allow staff and students to use personal skydrive if they want.
techyphil Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 Has anybody actually been using Google Apps day to day? I've got a few questions as to how good the spam filter is for email and if you needed a third party system in place to handle that? I'd like to get in touch and discuss everything in a bit more detail Thanks
CyberNerd Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 Has anybody actually been using Google Apps day to day? I've got a few questions as to how good the spam filter is for email and if you needed a third party system in place to handle that? I'd like to get in touch and discuss everything in a bit more detail Thanks pm sent
gshaw Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 I'd be hard pushed to see a reason why any school would choose live@edu over google apps unless they really didn't look at the full features of google apps and just assumed that @edu would fit better into their MS world. We do allow staff and students to use personal skydrive if they want. We're in an odd place of doing part training courses, part certified qualifications and part social classes so Microsoft makes sense in order to keep things consistent. I dread to wonder how confused students would be jumping between Office 2010 and Google Apps interfaces If MS sorted out their integration they'd wipe the floor with Google... hoping Office 365 with ADFS being SAML based will open up more opportunities than the current LiveID system which can be a right pain to work with at times Skydrive and Office Web Apps are the most valuable part of it for us, definitely more so than email from what I've seen
edutech4schools Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 (edited) I dread to wonder how confused students would be jumping between Office 2010 and Google Apps interfaces So when you pupils went from office 2003 to 2007 did they get confused? as that was a complete design change. If a school or company goes over to Google you no longer use office so no jumping needed, and it has a much simpler interface so even less confusion. If MS sorted out their integration they'd wipe the floor with Google Very much doubt that. Google offer far more than just an office suite. Lets take photos, which in a school is hugely important, with Google you get Picasa, an online professional photo storage system on par with flicker. Microsoft completely failed in that department and had to shut down their online photo storage site. All photos can be shared with another users or with a website simply by clicking share. Lets take video storage next, with Google you get 3 choices for video storage. No1 - Youtube - the worlds biggest video storage site. 2. store your videos in a folder in Google Docs. 3. Google also give you a domain only video sharing service. All videos can be shared with another users or with a website simply by clicking share. Lets take docs. I can create a document and share it with 100 people. All of those users can work on that document at the same time. No locked documents. Lets take sites. every users can create an unlimited amount of websites. You can create a website as a school landing page (like Igoogle) so when they logon all the docs emails calendars photos are on a single page. I have dumped our old school websites / vle and replaced them with google sites. You can embed api's apps or any other google based system such as a shared calendar in a site and make it user dependant. The staff can create a document in Google docs, then click share with website and thats it on the website for the parents, staff or pupils. Google docs also has the much loved forms, a system that lets you easily create a question-air or test sheets which auto populates a spreadsheet with graphs and feedback and can be added to the site, emailed or shared. You can also display live data from the answers on the site. You get Google groups, a forum system which can be used for IT work requests and linked to the school site. You get mobile device policy control. You get access to a massive amount of google api's that I have not even started to look at yet. Best of all you get thanked by the staff for introducing something that is easy for the non computer literate staff to use, rather than trying to keep things consistent for you own benefit. We're in an odd place of doing part training courses, part certified qualifications and part social classes so Microsoft makes sense in order to keep things consistent. EDIT: I could go on (and probably will add more to the list) but I need to go and get some food. Edited January 26, 2012 by edutech4schools 3
PiqueABoo Posted January 27, 2012 Posted January 27, 2012 Lets take photos, which in a school is hugely important, I ever really mess up, I'm gonna blame it on pixel-deprivation during my formative years at the mercy of one of those notoriously barbaric 20th century state educations.
nickpowell1980 Posted February 14, 2012 Posted February 14, 2012 Does anyone know if you get advertising pop ups with the Google Apps VLE?? And also how secure is it? Is seems to me that anything that is free has to have a catch somewhere?? I am investigating VLE's on behalf of a family friend who is a primary school headteacher, and she is not that tech savvy, so they will need something quite straight forward to use. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
CyberNerd Posted February 14, 2012 Posted February 14, 2012 Does anyone know if you get advertising pop ups with the Google Apps VLE?? You can turn off advertising on Google apps for education. And also how secure is it? Is seems to me that anything that is free has to have a catch somewhere?? It's used by largeorganisations including banks. Google apps is only free for education. The I guess catch is product placement. I am investigating VLE's on behalf of a family friend who is a primary school headteacher, and she is not that tech savvy, so they will need something quite straight forward to use. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Google apps isn't really a VLE. for that you would need something like Moodle to organise courses etc. Google apps does integrate very nicely into VLE's though and you could certainly create courses in google sites, as well as using sites to give students an e-portfolio for their work.
edutech4schools Posted February 14, 2012 Posted February 14, 2012 I am investigating VLE's on behalf of a family friend who is a primary school headteacher, and she is not that tech savvy, so they will need something quite straight forward to use. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks http://statica.cdngeek.net/images/smilies/biggrin.png I would like to add that it is perfect for primary schools. When rolling out I have tended to start with sites as this can replace most of the terrible websites / VLE's that are in place for primary schools, this then gives your staff and pupils a central area for any other apps you might want to add. I have recently run 3 courses (in 3 schools) teaching the staff how to add content to the class pages and they love it. I normally spend about 30mins going over the basics and then the next hour or so is used by the staff to create their own pages. Google apps isn't really a VLE Not from a secondary school point of view but it does more or less everything a standard paid for VLE does in a primary school. Teachers can share and receive homework, Upload coursework and pupils can have an e-portfolio area etc.
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