More than 7 million students use Google Apps for Education
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 13:09 on August 30, 2010
The upcoming start of the new school year offers new challenges to school administrations in our rapid changing new world: better and more open communication to parents, budgetary restrictions, students that grow up with Facebook and expect location-independent access to their information. And software vendors that have started battle against each other because they understand that the students of today will be the end users of tomorrow.
Microsoft and Google offer schools interesting solutions. But as a school where and how do you start?
Do schools really have to use their limited budgets to purchase servers, licenses, spam protection, backups, etc, … the usual traditional IT-equipment? If you ask us, no they don’t need to.
Both Microsoft with Live@Edu and Google with Google Apps for Education offer schools and universities email, calendar and collaboration software for their students at very interesting conditions. Actually free or almost free.
In the United States and closer to home in the UK and the The Netherlands, more and more universities and schools go for Google Apps for Education. New announcements rapidly follow each other.
But as a school where do you start? Although some schools have their internal IT department their collaborators expect support and guidance during a migration. And let us not forgot the teachers or faculty members. Also for them changing course materials to use the new technological possibilities that the Google collaboration platform offers is a serious attention point. A train-the-trainer program for them is a necessity.
Anticipating on demand by Flemish and Dutch schools and universities, Romneya has made sure that they at least have one thing less to worry about: finding qualified Google Apps-trainers.
Being the first in Europe, Romney has a Google Apps for Education-certified trainer onboard. This qualification is given by Google Inc. after successfully completing several exams that prove superior knowledge of and competence in Google Apps for Education.
Do you have plans for Google Apps in your school or university? Talk to us.
