I watched a webinar today that was advertised through Wisconsin CESA as help for school to roll into the use of Google Apps. I have watched one previous webinar and had our Tech Guru watch the integration one. The one I watched today was truly an overview of what Google can offer a school.
One of the best points I got out of it was: Why not go to the cloud. This is an interesting point, I have been moving to the cloud for a while, just for the pure fact that I don't want to carry around a flash drive, burn a CD, or email back and forth a file and remember which email as the most current version. I have to take a backseat and think about the rest of the people in my building. I need to think more like them, but it stumps me. I just love to use technology to make my life easier. I know I sometimes get sidetracked trying to find an easier way of doing a job, but in the end I will do tasks more efficiently
Just this week I met the new Principal at our elementary school. I got a quick introduction and then she asked the Tech Guru a question on how to link files from the server to her Ipad, she got the response of it can't be done. Then I pipped up and said, use dropbox. It is free and works great. To me this is second nature, find a solution to the problem. With my new role of tech integration at the high school I will need to consider lots of fears that people have in technology and embrace the role of bring them along.
Also in the Webinar I got an overview of all the apps that are available, but one of the nicest features with Google apps is the single sign-in. It alleviates the issue with student not remembering username and passwords. They will always have access to their files instead of saving it to the network and not being able to work on it at home because they don't have the file or don't have the program. The only limitation is they need to have a device and have access to the internet. I did a survey with our school to see how much access we have to the internet, of course it is not everyone but it is getting better.
My next step in rolling out Google Apps is going to be looking over the agreement with CESA. But I really don't see why we need to go with them when we are already signed up. Again more research. Anyone out there know why I should sign the Wisconsin state Google agreement vs just keeping with registered domain name I setup last year?
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