| Google helps schools stretch tight budgets Posted: 30 Oct 2013 12:22 PM PDT Posted by Rajen Sheth, Director, Chromebooks for Education
The 2013/14 school year has started, with U.S. educators and their students returning to find much lower budgets available to meet ever-higher aspirations. Three districts shared their stories with us about how Google Apps and Chromebooks help them provide excellent opportunities for students, even in these challenging times. Huntsville School District, Texas  | Third grade students in Huntsville School District
collaborate on a Chromebook | Last year, Huntsville Independent School District struggled with outdated equipment and poor cellular coverage. To address these challenges, they built a wireless network, established free Google Apps accounts for email and word processing, and earned a $100,000 grant, which they used to purchase 350 Chromebooks for grades 6-12. Today over 1,000 students have access to Chromebooks, and high school students even take them home. Charlie Baker, a math teacher, explained the value of Chromebooks at home: "Students can send me a snapshot of the screen to illustrate a problem they're struggling with. I can use Google Hangouts to help them work through to a solution. Student engagement is higher, and the quality of work has improved significantly." Merced High School District, California
Although the communities of Merced Union High School District face many economic challenges, the District provides the latest tools for learning. Information Systems Manager Anthony Thomas told us that a year ago, when the district was evaluating computers, students test-drove a range of candidate devices and "voted overwhelmingly in favor of Chromebooks as the most valuable educational tool." The high school deployment has been so successful that the district aims to be 1:1 with more than 5,000 Chromebooks by 2016. Anthony sees students using Chromebooks in locations all around the school campus, just as they might in a work environment. "The 1:1 Chromebook environment has a major impact on districts like ours," says Anthony. "Today's work environment is all about teams, and that's what these students are learning. They're acquiring real job skills."  | A student in Queensbury School District works
on his Chromebook | Queensbury Union Free School District, New York
Matt Hladun, Director of Technology for the Queensbury Union Free school district in rural New York State, faces a different challenge. Matt lost a number of IT staff to budget cuts. With 2,500 Chromebooks and just three team members, he really appreciates the minimal support that the devices require, saying "it's hard to argue with increased student motivation, more efficient teaching processes, better communications, and a saving of tens of thousands of dollars a year in software costs. Introducing Google Apps is the most fulfilling thing I've ever done. I'm seeing teaching change, and I want it working everywhere. It is absolutely making a difference." Matt was also able to establish a "Technology Bullpen" of five teachers in each building who help their peers get the best out of the devices and tools. To learn more about Chromebooks for Education, visit our website and review the IDC White Paper "Quantifying the Economic Value of Chromebooks."    |
| How to get to the cloud: 5 easy steps Posted: 30 Oct 2013 09:10 AM PDT Posted by Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google Earlier this month, I delivered a keynote at Gartner's annual symposium and published a blog post about the rapidly evolving landscape of business technology. The rise of cloud computing and ubiquitous, powerful mobile devices means that organizations can reduce their IT bills significantly while boosting employees' productivity and collaboration. Moving to the cloud is no longer a questionable proposition — it's inevitable. This led some of the organizations I work with to ask: "That all makes sense, but how do we actually get started?" Good question. Here are five concrete steps you can take to get started: - Start by setting up a Google Apps account for your organization. This will allow you to move your standard productivity and communications work to the cloud: you'll use Gmail for your email (with your own domain, like joe@joescoffeeshop.com); Google Calendar for your calendars; Google Drive to store files; Google Docs to create and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations; and Hangouts to send instant messages and hold video calls. This will free your staff from spending time maintaining servers and installing upgrades. Google Apps is free to schools and non-profits, and costs $50/person per year for businesses and government agencies.
- Move your other standard business applications to cloud-based equivalents. Popular apps include Workday (HR), Salesforce (CRM), Zendesk (customer service), Netsuite (Financials), and Wix or Weebly (websites). More companies are creating and launching cloud-based business applications every day — check out the Chrome Web Store for more.
- Move your custom applications to a cloud infrastructure. Many organizations have built their own custom applications or need to be able to do very specialized programming. Most people use Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure. Choose between the first two.
- Standardize on a modern browser, ideally Chrome. Chrome is built for speed, simplicity and security — and of course it's free. To make sure that you're protected from the latest threats, Chrome automatically updates whenever a new version of the browser is available. You can also use Chrome on all the major desktop and mobile platforms, including Android and iOS, and sync your tabs and bookmarks between different devices. Chrome for Business includes a cloud-based management console, which lets you customize policies and preferences for your employees easily from the web, including which apps and extensions they receive, across their devices.
- For hardware, you can now move to a flexible, "bring your own device" policy. Without servers, the only real hardware you need are computers and phones — and a true cloud architecture works well with any operating system: Windows, Mac, Chrome OS, Android, iOS. People can choose the device that suits them, and you can then reimburse their purchases and/or their own personal cell phone and internet bills. If you do decide to supply your staff with computers, consider Chromebooks: they boot up in seconds, have built-in virus protection and are dead simple to deploy and manage.
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Lots of companies have already moved to the cloud successfully, from local coffee shops to major corporations with 200,000 employees. For small and mid-size companies, the transition can be made in a matter of days or weeks. For larger companies, who often have custom legacy systems built over many years, the migration may take a few months. In these cases, consider working with experts that specialize in helping companies move to the cloud using all the tools I've mentioned. The world is moving to the cloud. Now's the time for you to move, too.   |
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