ISD 88 Is Going Google

Google offers a suite of tools for collaboration, creation, and communication available at no cost to K-12 Schools called Google Apps for Education. Google Apps functions a lot like a personal Gmail, or Google account, but provides us with many more learning tools and a secure place to expand and collaborate with students, staff and beyond. Your Administrative Team met a number of times in the past few weeks to assess the benefits of these tools here in New Ulm Public Schools, and we are now in the first few stages of planning how and when we roll-out Google Apps for Education. I have much more I want to share in the near future, but you can find out more about Google Apps for Education by clicking this link.

Google Apps for Education is a large range of online tools, some of which are:

• Google Docs (or Google Drive) is a ‘cloud-based’ word processor you can collaborate in real-time with other people in the same document.

• Google Sites and Blogger.com are both places to create and share work online in a variety of ways.

• Gmail is Google’s email application that I believe to be easier to use than the current Kerio email.

• Google Calendar is a calendar system that is easy to share and access from almost any device or computer.

Switching out of Kerio email and into Gmail for our email is part of this process, and I will be working with teachers and staff in the upcoming weeks to formulate a plan to implement and learn these tools that we can all be comfortable with.