Give it Your Own Title- Google Apps

Instead of looking at immediate change, we should be looking at the possibilities for change, and then go from there. So begins a series of articles that all have hope, and lets start with one now.

Google Apps- For your Domain
Google Applications may be one of the most easy and successful things that a school could do. My school runs a Linux server with two versions of Windows Server (NT and 2003) running on top. This is one thing I have to stop and think about. First of all, Virtualization seems to be horribly inefficient. Second, since every one's files are stored on the 2003 Server, if that one has a problem, files aren't accessible. The server being down to begin with is always a headache, nobody will be able to log in. Thankfully, I have talked to the Network admin, and he says that we are getting a new server over the summer, which will run Linux. It will be a custom build, and I get to help. Hooray! We all win! Anyway, since the school has started using Google Apps, I haven't seen a lot of activity with it. It just seems to be another feature that kids have access to, but most choose not to use. Many kids, although, seem to love the ability to put a document up there, and then work on it from home. I like it, I don't have to carry around a thumb drive everywhere I go. It is very beneficial, your documents are backed up in several places, and the Google team keeps wonderful service of the headless machines that keep my docs. I barely experience a huge fault with the service. Now, the wonderful Google team is rolling out offline support for Google docs, and several other services. The offline support lets you edit your existing documents offline, with Google gears, and then you just type docs.google.com into your web browser! It is, truly brilliant. If a page doesn't come up, Gears probably isn't installed, or you haven't turned on docs offline. So far though, there isn't any support for Spreadsheets and Presentations, hopefully we will be seeing those soon!