Google Apps in education: widespread, simple, powerful, cheap

Some indications of the take-up of Google Apps and other cloud computing services in education.

• "10 million Apps users in education" Oct 2010 [source]
• "New York City, today [1/11/10] announced that it's moving to "Google Apps for Education," providing cloud-based email and collaboration tools to the entire university community. This announcement comes just weeks after New York State created an initiative to bring Google Apps for Education to their K-12 schools. With students and faculty across New York now using Google Apps, it looks like the Empire State has fully embraced the cloud." [Source]
• In Australia, a struggle is underway for university cloud computing between Microsoft's Live@edu and Gmail. Many universities have switched, with Live@edu ahead at this stage. Gmail has 1.5 million student users in NSW DET schools. [source]
  

Universities and schools are finding that the predictions in the Horizon Report that 2010 - 11 is the time when 'cloud' computing will have a major impact, is being borne out. One factor is cost. Another is that the cloud systems come with lots of very appealing ancillary tools, like the ability to collaboratively edit files from any location.

The occasional voices of paranoia that used to be heard are being overtaken by a more realistic perspective. The fear that the FBI can monitor email under the US Patriot Act is one of these. Why schools should fear this is not clear to me. Australian intelligence agencies have similar powers, as they do over intercepting mail or tapping phones. Universities which deal with serious issues of intellectual property and research have apparently been satisfied that their data is appropriately secure. Why a police agency would target student online projects or the staff meeting minutes escapes me.

Real threats to student and staff security are much closer to home. The most real threats are much more mundane: careless forwarding of private information, insecure passwords, contacting strangers and bullying.

Google Sites: a wiki with good sibling relations

I have been presenting a group of workshops recently showcasing a number of Web 2.0 applications and have used Google Sites as the starting point. From the speed with which teachers were able to set up a site and make it look presentable and funcitonal it is like most wikis, very easy to use. As I explored Sites more I found that it has some very useful features. One is that once you have a Google account - using any email as your identity, you can creat as many sites as you like. Different sites can have different acces right for a class of student to view, or edit, or open to the world. These can all be linked to a home site, so on the menu to the right, I was the sole editor of most of the pages listed, but Open Access is actually another site that could be edited by the workshop participants.

Another feature is a result of having some powerful siblings in the Google family, most of which integrate with Sites very well. You can view Calendars, Picasa Web Album slide shows, Google docs, and in the case of Forms, complete a suvey.

Many of the teachers immediately began setting up one or more sites for class use. The immediacy of wikis is very appealing to teachers, and the Forms from Google docs is an added bonus. This feature make creating a form, or survey a 15 minute task if you know what you want to ask and the resulting survey can be viewed in Sites, or emailed to the participants. The image of a survey to the right is how the survey appears when inserted into a Sites page.

A nice little feature is that when you go to the Insert menu in Sites and select a document to insert, you are taken to the list of files from you Google docs home page: Mr Google having taken the liberty of opening up the sibling site in the family. A single login to a Google account makes all of this very accessible and easy to use.

But really, most of these or similar features can be found in WetPaint or WikiSpaces and other wikis. The big news is that web publishing for students and teachers is available right now. What teachers really like and deserve is control of these applications. Teaching is an individual and often spontaneous art and teachers should not have to go through a middle-person to access these powerful learning tools.

If you would like to browse a site you can do so HERE.