Google at School

I know a very little bit about cloud computing. So I am hoping for some help here.

If Google offers mail, documents (word processing, spreadsheet), web pages, blogging tools, collaboration tools for free, why would anyone try to do these things in house?

I can see keeping sensitive data a little more secure by using server space that you pay to have secure. But how much of student work is really that sensitive?

I can see an advantage to someone else running the servers that hold the student work, run e-mail, host web pages... the price is right.

Has up-time been a problem? I have only heard of one time that G-Mail went down for maybe two hours. Is there more that I am not hearing about? I think that would be an amazing record for anyone and I am very amazed when I think of the number of users.

I know our IT staff is about one download away from being very seriously overworked. Is this something that would help us farm some things out?

Seth Godin and Connections to Education.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/thats-a-special.html

Seth Godin has a great blog.  I think he would say it is about marketing.  I think it is about business, life and leadership on the internet.  It is worth a look for educators as well.

I think schools do need to get more of their content online.

In the next couple of years, the office for working America is going to be where ever you want it to be.  That is actually happening now.  If the office is someplace warm and sunny next week (I am writing this between cold snaps in Minnesota.) don't you think people are going to want to take their kids?  These families are going to want to keep up with school AND go.  Teachers, you have all seen the "requests for assignments" for this very reason.  

Have you seen the harried parent coming to school to get the worksheet that got forgotten in the locker?  Wouldn't it be easier to go online to get the same sheet?  Why does it have to be on paper?

There are tools that are more than ready to make this happen. Moodle, SmartMusic, Blackboard, some grade books, Google Docs, student-server access can all be used to make this change work. 

We can make this work.  But like Seth says in blog post, there is no clear cut way to do this, "the transition isn't structured in an orderly way."  Educators need to be the leaders in this situation or education may get lost in the confusion.

He also warns that this "isn't the old business, just with computers."  Same for education.  Not the same old school.  I think these changes will be a good.  Not the same, better.

Internet at Work

I beginning to think this Internet idea is creeping into EVERYTHING we do.  There were some problems at work this morning with our connection and I didn't get very much work done.  

Grades?  Nope, online.  E-mail?  Only if it was local.  Work on Google Docs with my teaching partner?  Nope, online.

I can't remember the last time this has happened. (Last year sometime???)  Thanks Tom!  Tom runs the network here.  He does a pretty amazing job of keeping the computers talking to each other.  I'm pretty sure the problem wasn't here, but further up the line. 

I can put you in touch with Tom, but I would need my $50K finders fee up front... and probably a new identity.  This staff likes the way things work.

Google Docs--Sheets

Have you ever needed to share a spreadsheet?  Do you need to have several people work on a spreadsheet at the same time?  You might want to take a look at Google Doc's Spreadsheet.

I share a number of students with another teacher.  She does the lessons and get the large group and the report card to fill in.  This year, we are trying Google Docs to help us keep track of each other's work.  

Our web based grade book isn't to good for this, so we just opened a sheet.  

Both of us can work on the sheet at the same time.  Both of us can access it at the same time.  We can work on it from home or school.  It is stored professionally by Google.  Overall, I would say it is a great fit for us.

Google Docs is worth a look if you need to share authorship.