- Dr. Henry C. Thiele, chief technology officer for the three-school Maine Township High School District 207 in Park Ridge, Ill., presented at the International Society for Technology in Education's 2012 conference Tuesday, running through a list of 13 misconceptions that educators often have about Google Apps for Education.
- Among those misunderstandings include beliefs that the services are not free, that ads can't be turned off and that schools do not own their data.
- Thiele also claimed that his school district has saved $436,000 e-mail, spam filtering and other costs since they began using Google's apps.
From the article:
Since its debut in October 2006, Google Apps for Education has emerged as a viable resource for K–12 schools that wish to provide their students with e-mail and collaboration tools but lack the money to pay for such services. The integrated, hosted communication and collaboration solution offers schools core functions such as e-mail storage and search (Gmail); scheduling (Google Calendar); instant messaging (Google Talk); document, spreadsheet and presentation creation and sharing (Google Docs); content management (Google Sites); and video hosting and sharing (Google Video). ...