Unimpressed with Google edu suite
Posted by Patrick Delaney on February 15th, 2007
At this point, I’m as unimpressed with Google edu suite as I am with anything else that is free. You get what you pay for. For the teachers and students at myschool and writing project, I want to get, and am willing to pay for, web based apps that have security, reliability, speed, basic posting, editing, revising, publishing, archiving, searching, RSS-ing, tagging, and maybe a little FOAF-ing. Then I want to be able to talk a little to the designer administrator of that tool when I need help understanding its more arcane aspects. What do I mean by “web based apps”?
We’ve set up Google Edu at Galileo. I think we’re the first school in California to do it. We were interested because of email accounts admin-ed by our people and calendars that we might share among the tech savvy. For a variety of reasons (described below), we’re moving slowly.
The Google Edu suite feels a little like product placement and not like an open source app ripe for the using. Tom Hoffman wrote about all this back in October, soon after Google for Educators was launched. See his blog post here:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2006/10/001573.php
The Google mail and calendar set up for Galileo gives us the ability to create email accounts for all our staff and students. We haven’t done it because the appropriate use policies and legal ramifications have tobe investigated before we launch. There is no one in tech leadership -at the school or the district - with the time to do that at the moment. Truth be told, the hurdle of getting JUST our staff to use a Galileo gmail system is enormous. People are used to using what they are used to using, and to move them to something new en masse requires time for training, a system of accountability (”You must check your new galileoweb.org email account everyday!”), and a clear understanding that the tool suite is here for the long haul, and not just another temporary pilot project.
Meanwhile, Galileo gmail and calendar is the limit to what we have access to in our galileoweb.org Google for Education account. To me, there’s no point to doing it without Reader. And Docs, Spreadsheet and Sketchpad would be most welcome. As would tabbed home page. Doug Page, a math teacher here who’s starting to help out with tech integration, is more of a “the glass is half full” contact on this than I am.
Obviously the legal and appropriate use issues increase with the menu of apps available. (Example: What happens when a kid uses Galileo’s Google apps to subscribe to an “adult” RSS feed?) From what I heard of the GoogleTeacher gathering they did out here in the Bay area, none of these wish list or appropriate use issues for Google Edu were addressed. Instead, they spent time demonstrating Google apps in general.
Meanwhile, I think there is still a need to address the issue of hosting, of access by teachers and schools to Application Service Providers that is reasonably priced, secure, and capable of taking advantage of eduservers that get eRate pricing. ASP hosting is once again becoming a hot issue on the National Writing Project’s tech liaison listServ, even as we end the NWP support for the Manila pilot project. If anyone ever decides to invest sometime into CMS / digital portfolio / portal work, I think NWP and localWP sites and fellow traveler organizations might be interested in supporting the effort.
Someone somewhere should just sit down and do the relatively simple work of creating a “container” of apps that would work in some, not all,schools. Manila does that, but it’s old. WordPress does it; Joomla does it; Drupal does it; Mambo does it. We can wait until openAcademic launches, but fact is a small investment in programming and discussion of what has worked so far could produce a very quick souped-up application that would do lots of what people want to do. The trick is to make it portable, a “container” that can be hosted by any number of ASPs. That way you avoid the legal stuff and the maintenance stuff. I have not had to talk to Erin Clerico at the Kern County Office of Edweb team about Manila for 2 years as long as he did general back up and updates and restores (standard ASP contract work). Yes, Manila is old old old and limited. And yes, he could have fixed stuff a little quicker and maybe improved stuff, but it wasn’t necessary. And cheap does not begin to describe the deal that we got for over 300 weblogs per year. Something as reliable as Manila could be easily done with the right programmer / designer / teacher advisory group. Once built, it could be given away and hosted wherever for a reasonable price. (LunarPages, Joyent, Blue Host, blah, blah.)
Bah. Why do I keep kicking this dead digital horse? Blackboard.com will roll out its k12 killer app just as openAcademic releases theirs.