Why I’m excited about Google Apps for Education

After several years of consideration and deliberation, Google Apps for Education has been launched throughout the YRDSB. Google Apps is a collection of services including the Google Docs collaborative suite of office applications, 30 GB of Google Drive cloud storage, email, calendaring, website creation, and more. Every student and staff member now has a Google Apps for Education account with the username and password synchronized to their school computer login.
With Google Apps comes many new possibilities:

• Students can collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentations from any location at any time.
• Teachers can see students’ work as it develops, and give feedback by adding comments.
• Teachers can see which students contribute to a collaborative document by viewing the document’s revision history.
• Documents cannot be forgotten at home or lost on a corrupted USB drive.
• Departments can share a folder of common resources to access them anywhere, and even offline using Google Drive Sync
• All students now have a Google Account, so can use that to easily access services like Khan Academy.
• All students now have an email address under the gapps.yrdsb.ca domain, so they can now enrol services like Prezi’s Enjoy Edu which are free for educational users only.
• Shared calendars which can be added to mobile devices or embedded in Moodle courses can help with communication with departments, classes, clubs, and teams.

What you should do right now

When someone shares a document with you, comments on a document you have shared, or responds to a comment you made, an email will be sent to your new “firstname.lastname@gapps.yrdsb.ca” email address. Because you are unlikely to check this address regularly it is a very good idea to forward mail from this address to your regular board account. Here are the steps:[1]

1. Log into your GAPPS account at https://google.yrdsb.ca
2. Click on the MAIL link in the black menu bar across the top of the screen.
3. Click on the GEAR ICON near the top right of the screen and then choose SETTINGS from the drop-down menu.
4. Click on the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab along the top.
5. Click on the Add a forwarding address button.
6. Enter your Board email address (ex. firstname.lastname@yrdsb.edu.on.ca)
7. Now, log in to your Board email to verify the forwarding request.
8. Last, select the radio button beside Forward a copy of incoming mail to....
9. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and Save changes.

What you could do before September

If you have a few minutes this summer and are curious to explore Google Apps for Education to think of how you might use it with your classes next year, here are three suggestions:

1. Play. Log in to https://google.yrdsb.ca and look around. Try creating different kinds of documents by clicking the big red CREATE button and looking at the different tools available. Look under the “Help” menu at the right side of the menu bar at the top of a document for resources from Google
2. Visit the “Google Apps Tutorials” site created by our Digital Literacy Resource Teachers: bit.ly/yrdsbgappstutorialYou will need to log in to your YRDSB Google Apps account first.
3. Enroll and explore Jim Jamieson’s “Exploring Google Apps for Education” Moodle: http://bit.ly/exploregoogleapps

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[1] Source: Jim Jamieson