Google Apps for Education is a free cloud service from Google. All educational organizations are eligible for this free service. One of the many cool things about Google Apps is, you do not have to install anything on your workstation to use it. It is totally web-based. Google does offer a "Google Drive" app that allows you to drag or copy files to a local folder. Those files are then sync'd to your cloud storage. In addition to the Educational Apps, Google offers "Google Apps for Business". Google Apps for Business is a paid service. With the business account, you pay a "per user" fee. Google also offers a free individual account.
In my Google Apps class, many people already have a Gmail account and use the webmail and Google web search tool. I even have some participants that use the Calendar. They are surprised to learn that Google is so much more than that. Google offers a complete productivity suite in addition to other useful tools. These tools include:
- Word Processor
- Spreadsheet
- Presentation Program
- Forms Tool
- Drawing Tool
- Drive Cloud Storage
In addition to the many office productivity tools, Google Apps also has a blogger, sites, Google + (social networking), Contacts, and chat.
The fact that all of the Google Apps are seamlessly integrated makes them easy to learn and use. Plus many of the productivity tools offers real-time collaboration. For instance; you and several other coworkers can collaborate on a shared document all at the same time. As individuals enter content into the document, you will see a special colored cursor as they type. As you are collaborating, you can chat in the "chat bar" to discuss changes and/or additions to the document. This is a very useful tool. Google Apps has built-in revision history. This allows the owner of the document to keep up with document revisions and/or changes and each change has a time/date stamp.
Google Drive can convert many different types of documents to the Google format. You also have the ability to download Google documents and convert them to other formats as well. For instance, you can create a Google word processing document and download it to your computer as a Microsoft Word document. You have several other download options as well.
Google Apps for Education is an amazing resource. The webmail, calendar and task list are super programs. When you factor in the practicality and usefulness of the Google Drive apps, Google Apps is a no brainer!
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