A Message from John Krouskoff
Last year the district technology committee agreed that it was in our best interests replace Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps as our district's email and calendar platform.  Many teachers and students already use our Google Apps service, and teachers can sign in to the teacher side for email and to collaborate with other teachers (no students are in this domain).  Teachers and students can log in to the student side for collaboration and email with teachers and staff. 

What is Google Apps?

Google Apps is a suite of web-based messaging and collaboration applications that Google hosts on their own servers. Google provides these applications as a "service," rather than as software you have to download and install. To access these applications, you simply use a web browser on any computer that's connected to the Internet.                   

What is Google Apps

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Why did our district choose Google Apps?

Based on our recent growth and cost trends, we looked for an email and calendar solution that could provide with us the following benefits:

  • Lower infrastructure costs — All your email will be stored securely on Google's servers, so we'll no longer have to maintain email servers on-site
  • Ability to consolidate our platforms — We can eliminate redundancy by moving all of our email and calendar platforms to Google Apps
  • Lower support costs — Because Google hosts the email and calendar services, there's no more email client software to maintain on your computer
  • Innovative solutions — We can leverage the ongoing creative and technical solutions of the Google Apps platform to provide employees with powerful, easy-to-use tools for getting their work done
  • Highly scalable environment — With Google Apps, our email capacity will grow automatically as our organization grows, and we'll avoid the complexity of internal systems
  • Access to services from anywhere, at anytime — A key benefit of the Google-hosted solution is that we can access email, contacts, and calendar from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection, from anywhere in the world
  • More collaboration features — With Google's next-generation applications, we can collaborate with colleagues, customers, and partners more easily and efficiently than ever before
  • Instant messaging — Because Google Apps includes Google Talk, we can now implement an instant messaging system for our organization

What does Google Apps include?

Your new Google Apps account will include the following services: 




Gmail
 Google Calendar Google Talk Google Docs Google Sites

  • Lots of storage — You get a full 25 GB of online storage for your email, so you can archive all of your email online. You'll no longer need to worry about deleting messages or saving them in offline folders.
  • Enhanced message organization and retrieval — With Gmail, you'll spend less time managing folders and searching for messages. For example, you can add one or more tags, or "labels," to your messages to organize and store them more efficiently. Labels replace folders, and a message may have as many labels as you desire.  With the Google-powered search feature, you can find any message quickly and easily, whether it's in your Inbox or stored in your message archive.
  • Easier calendar sharing — Google Calendar lets you and your team quickly and easily share your calendars with each other and specify the details you want to show. Calendar sharing is a great way to keep each other informed about your schedules. This is a great way to keep students and parents informed as well!  Calendar events can include attachments, such as rubrics or other items for students.
  • Integrated chat — With the Google Talk instant messaging application, you can communicate instantly with other people in our organization right from the Gmail interface. In addition, all your chats are automatically saved, so you can always retrieve important information later.
  • Real-time collaboration — Using Google Docs, you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and more, that you and your team can view and edit at the same time. Up to 50 people can edit concurrently from anywhere in the world on most items!
  • Easy-to-build team web sites — With Google Sites, your classes and teams have the ability to quickly publish a robust internal web site on which to gather all sorts of shared information, such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, files, and videos for school related projects. You can even embed Google calendars, discussion forums, and other gadgets on your site!.
  • Opening up a School Dude ticket - IT Help Desk - School Dude

  • Contact your Library Media Specialist in your building. If the Library Media Specialist can't resolve the problem, they can escalate the issue to the Building Tech Support Person. If the Building Tech Support Person needs assistance, they can contact Shain Jacob by email and School Dude.