The more I read, the more convinced I am that the best tool for our school’s communication and collaboration is Google Apps, and the FREE package is getting better all the time.

Right now, my school is using webmail hosted by the same company as our website. Apart from that, admin and teachers are collaborating on documents and policies via a wiki hosted by Wikispaces. We store most documents on the wiki (as well as hard drives), but some are stored in other places. Our need for a communicative and collaborative platform which integrates calendar, online storage, student work, etc. is immense. And Google Apps seems to have everything we could need. The major challenge will be implementation.

Folks tend to have an aversion to change, even when it’s warranted and needed, but that’s where a leader needs to come in and clearly communicate the benefits of the change and ensure stakeholders of proper training while in the process. And that’s my job. There’s no doubt that there will be resistance, but I’m confident that as teachers, staff and administrators give change a chance, they will see the benefits our school will accrue by transitioning to Google Apps. I’ll report back about how that’s going.

Below, I’ve included two videos illustrating the benefits of Google App for schools. Let me know what you think.

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