We are getting ready to give our students access to Google Apps and Email (with the ssdcosmos.org domain) starting with the 2012-2013 school year. This is another step in improving our student's school experience and giving them exposure to the sorts of technology they will need to know how to use in their future. To that end we have set up the Cosmos Network for Google Apps. 

Google is currently offering schools a hosted solution for their email, calendar, and chat through Google Apps for Education, our integrated communication and collaboration solution. Additionally, you can complement the core suite to meet your users' needs, with access to dozens of Google Applications

 

Core Google Apps for Education suite includes:

 

• Gmail: Email storage and search tools that help your students find information fast and instant messaging from right inside their accounts.

• Google Calendar: Students can organize their schedules and share events and calendars with others.

• Google Docs: Share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Collaborate in real-time with your team or with your whole school. You can publish final documents to the entire world, too.

• Google Sites: Work together to keep related documents, web content and other information in one place, on one site.

• Google Video for education: A video hosting and sharing solution that enables schools and other organizations to use video as an effective medium for internal communication and collaboration.

You may also want to check out these reasons for Why Google Apps?

Yes...and no. Contrary to popular belief, your Systems Administrator doesn't stay up nights seeking new and diabolical ways to harass you with new software. Just the opposite. We are trying to find ways to simplify systems and operations while implementing technology in such a way that it supports education, not technology for technology's sake. The wonderful thing about Google Apps is it is entirely form driven and those forms are as simple as any we have seen. Nothing to download, a clean interface with online storage, so students can access their files from anywhere with an internet connection. 

 

You have resources too! No matter how busy we are, we want you to be a success implementing this technology in your classroom. Your coworkers are also a resource. We are all have the same goal, and some of your coworkers are complete whizzes at working with this stuff. With Google Apps there is also a treasure trove of online information, including information from around the world on ideas on how to use it in your classroom. 

First Class is an unusual product. I have administered several enterprise email servers and have never seen one even close to being like First Class. It tries to be everything to everyone and as a result fails at being truly good at anything, be it email, web server, collaboration server, directory, or calendar. It's obtuse to use. Technology wise, it's dated. It has no database for tracking or storing email, everything is in a flat file. The First Class server folder has almost 10 million files in it! First Class server itself consumes 100% of the CPU resources of any machine it is on, just sitting there. It's considered a 'normal' function of the software, but in almost 20 years of working in IT I have never seen another product do that and consider it normal operation. It's also one of the most expensive product of it's kind on the market. 

 

So, along with the students next fall we will all be rocking Gmail with our ssdvt.org email addresses. Why Gmail you ask? 

 

• It's free! My favorite price. 

• Massive amounts of storage, gigabytes worth. 

• Instantly searchable email. 

• Easy to configure labels, filters and stars, oh my! 

• You can access it anywhere, from your laptop, from your home, from your phone...(channeling Dr. Seuss)

• Better spam filtering, Google has rooms full of people worrying about spam, rather than one frazzled person.

• We will be able to use the savings to implement email archiving, a much needed feature. 

• Did I mention it's free!?

 

The change over will happen this summer, and will be in full swing for August. We will be doing a primer on using Gmail and Google Apps in the near future to get you started. You will be able to take your mail with you and we will work with you on transfering contacts into Gmail. 

 

After the change over, new email will exclusively be going to Gmail, but the First Class server will remain operational well into the school year until we are confident that everyone got all the materials off of it that they need. 

 

I am very excited for these changes and the additional tools it will bring for Students and Staff!