Since my first encounter with Google Apps I have had a recurring thought: “This was made for Education”. It has so much to offer. And it’s free to schools, colleges and universities.
I have a 12 year old son just starting Year 8 (UK). The collaboration features of Google Apps would open up a whole lot of new possible ways of working on projects. The ability to share and work together on the same document, spreadsheet or presentation. To be able to see revision history, who did what and when. This can be done without any software install on the computer. Each school has its own private area within Google Apps, and everyone has their own login so students can work collaboratively from home.
Students can share their documents with their teacher for review and marking… no need to print a hard copy. Teachers can create web sites for their classes, hosted using Google Sites, to provide interactive material for classes and post news and student work plans.
Here’s a video interview of a college student in Canada where they use Google Apps.
This video is by ConnectingEducation, run by two people working in Education. They have some useful material for those interested in adopting Google Apps. It’s something that, if you present it to students, would be welcomed enthusiastically.. it fits with how they already use the internet. Trying to explain this to the school or college staff may take a little more effort.
As you’d expect, Google have a lot of information online to help the Education community move to Google Apps. The main web page is at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html
There are some recent posts from the Google Apps blog
