While popular in the US, apparently only one institution in Japan has moved to Google Apps to carry much of its IT services burden. That is Waseda University, a top private university in Tokyo and one that is at the center of Google's Android OS development for Japan.
To see why Google recommends Google Apps for institutions, see:
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/appsatschool.html#utm_campaign=gonegoogleuni&utm_medium=oa&utm_source=en-oa-na-us-gonegoogleuni-ihe-blogs&utm_term=ihe-blogs-appsleads
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html
Top 10 reasons to use Google Apps
excerpt:
>> 1. Students will love you for it
Schools tells us that when they ask their students what email they'd prefer, they overwhelmingly say Gmail.
"Our students approached us about a year ago, saying that we needed to improve our email and collaboration services. We actually had our student government tell us, 'we want you to implement Google Apps.'" - Wendy Woodward, Director of Technology Support Services, Northwestern University
2. Free up your IT
Focus your IT on activities that add value instead of worrying about the uptime of your email services.
"Google Apps has allowed us to get out of providing these commodity type services - such as maintaining an email and calendaring system - and focus on the things that we are uniquely equipped to do, like providing more resources to be able to better support teaching, learning and research." - Todd Sutton, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Application Services, UNC Greensboro
3. Easy to deploy
No software to install, no hardware to buy, just validate your MX records and create your accounts to get started. To integrate with what you already have, we work with open standards, have created a multitude of APIs, can point you to open source solutions for common integrations, and have approved partners with experience deploying Apps in schools. <<
See link above for all 10 reasons.
23 December 2009
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3 comments:
The Cloud gives control to people on their documents/work etc, it makes them publishers/authors/broadcasters etc. A spin of sharing and collaborative working added to the mix and we have what I call as the Cloud Learning environment. Here the control is shared between the learner and the facilitator or the academics .
This is new, as the old institutional VLE (or virtual learning environments, kept most of the control with the institutions or the academics) and the PLEs (personal learning environments) did not quite provide a cohesive platform to bring different people together form different walks of life uniformly.
To read more about a CLE, see http://edublend.blogspot.com/2009/12/cloud-learning-environment-what-it-is.html
An Example of that is my Exam revision site that taps into the students informal learning experience/practice. I blogged about it here
http://edublend.blogspot.com/2009/12/examopedia-re-birth-on-google-sites.html
And the resources is an Open access resource that can be accessed here:
http://sites.google.com/a/port.ac.uk/examopedia/
One BIG issue here in Japan is that many--if not most--students do not interact through personal computers and the rich web. They use their mobile phones, which are 3G plus plus. However, they are not conducive to the production of large texts. I cite the lack of alphabetic literacy and keyboard skills as the ultimate cause of this development.
See also:
http://eltinjapan.blogspot.com/2009/12/try-free-open-source-run-anywhere.html
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