Lauren Lai's List: Education

• Norfolk County Council has revealed that it has been involved in the largest rollout of Google Apps, in terms of user numbers.
• The council deployed Google Apps for Education to 148,000 registered users
• nearly two years ago
• Spanish bank BBVA announced that it was adopting Google Apps for 110,000 employees last month.
• as part of BT's managed internet service platform
• decided in 2009 to move to a cloud-based email service, in a bid to reduce costs and to provide staff and students access to a more familiar email interface at school.
• Another reason for the change was that: "[The RM email service] wasn't developing as we wanted to see it develop," said Michael Pickett, technical design architect at the council.
• Norfolk weighed up its options, which included Microsoft's Live Apps, as well as Google Apps for Education.
• "It was tough, they were both very competitive. Google really won it on the innovation side, and Google met our requirements for cloud delivery and open standards," said Pickett.
• completed the Google Apps rollout in June 2010.
• The single sign-on infrastructure means that users can move from one Shibboleth-supported service to another by only signing in the one time. For example, the council's users only need to sign in once when moving between Google Apps and its Espresso Primary digital curriculum service, which are both supported by Shibboleth.
• Norfolk currently allows access to Google Docs, including presentation, and Gmail, to users, but has restricted access to applications such as Google Chat.
• Another area of Google investment that Norfolk is currently trialling is in the search giant's Chromebooks. The council currently has 22 Chromebooks running in two schools, and three in IT for support purposes. The expectation is that the Google Chromebooks could significantly reduce the management overheads.
• "You potentially don't need a directory service in a school, or back-up services. A school could move to Chromebooks and everything would be done in the cloud. We don't have to send engineers out to fix things.

12 more annotations...

• The School of Arts and Sciences Computing Department will use Google Apps for Education and switch the official University email service to Gmail from Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail.

• Current undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences and Liberal Professional Studies students will be able to switch their University email accounts from Penn Live to Google@SAS this summer, if no problems arise. Incoming students will be offered a Gmail account in May.

    

  The new service will first be tested by members of the Student Technology Advisory Board in the next few weeks and will then be tested by 250 students.
• “We just saw more than 50 percent of students forward emails from their Hotmail to Gmail accounts and thought it would be more convenient this way,” said Chris Mustazza, the director of Social Sciences Computing and Student Technology.
• Mustazza said, “one interpretation of this is that students switch to Gmail over time because they prefer it to the Penn Live offering. Thus, we’ve made the effort to formalize a partnership with Google.”
• allow students to maintain two Gmail inboxes — professional and personal — in one account.
• Because all of Google’s data is stored through cloud storage, privacy issues took the forefront when negotiating the contract
• The new system will be “going well beyond the commercial Gmail in terms of protection and security,” said Mustazza, confidently noting that the new system will comply with federal regulations on student data privacy. This will allow the University to officially use Google Apps software, such as Google Documents, in classrooms.
• Apps for Education are free of charge to the University.
• a lot more convenient than what we had before
• Gmail is the “most advanced system for email.”
• Google is rumored to launch its own drive service that would offer more storage space
• According to the Official Google Enterprise Blog in October 2011, 62 out of the nation’s top 100 universities use Google Apps for Education. These schools include Yale and Brown universities and Harvard College.

10 more annotations...

• The Botswana government has said that Google must foot the bill for a public awareness campaign before it starts shooting footage for its Google Street View Maps. The campaign will be done through the media and at Kgotla meetings.
• At the press conference yesterday, it emerged that initially Google targeted Botswana's lucrative tourism destinations for the project.
• Google communications and public affairs officer for sub-Saharan Africa, Dr Julie Taylor told Mmegi in a separate  interview that  their requests to countries for filming usually takes three to six months to be  approved but in Botswana this has not been the case.
  Following Google's application last year, the government established a task force that researched and made recommendations regarding the project.
• In August the government gave Google preliminary conditional interests, outlining issues to be resolved in the implementation plan. Government spokesman, Jeff Ramsay says the matters are yet to be finalised. Google's poor record in 30 countries where they have carried out the project has made Botswana government to approach the matter with caution.
• Google team will be under 24-hour surveillance from Botswana security to ensure they do not film private homes and protected places.
• Ramsay said they do not expect google to film anywhere around the Government Enclave or into people's homes and businesses except with written consent.
• numerous enquiries from tourist outlets in the Okavango Delta, though she did not name names. She explained that the filming technology blurs people's faces  and vehicle plate numbers automatically, making sure it does not compromise privacy.
• Google collected  600 gigabytes of data from users of  public WIFI stations. These included snippets of private data such as email. Later, Google claimed this was a mistake.

6 more annotations...

• Google's new privacy policy has generated considerable discomfort across the Internet. The search engine giant's new rules, set to take effect March 1, will allow personal information collected by one Google site to be used by all of them. Essentially it combines about 70 different policies used by the many branches of the Google tree.
• main grievance arising from the upcoming change is that users cannot opt out of the agreement
• Google's ability to track users' locations have been growing louder lately and the consolidation of the privacy policy
• The good news is that the policy changes will not apply to Google Apps for Education

2 more annotations...

• SchoolBook is inviting any teacher who was rated to provide a response or explanation

• The U.F.T. encourages teachers to comment on their reports, particularly if they contain significant errors.”

   

  Teachers, to submit your response to your data report, fill out this Google form or scroll down. You will need your most recent teacher data report or an @schools.nyc.gov e-mail address so that we can ensure that only you respond on your behalf
• The responses will live on our site with the numbers, and may also be used in reporting articles about the ratings

1 more annotation...

• The U.K. opened the doors to CloudStore, a G-Cloud apps store with over 1,700  applications available. The large library of apps available comes from 258 of  the most influential names in the business, including IBM, Microsoft, Google,  and HP.
• app will allow midsized companies to buy the tools they need for their specific  business. Clients purchase applications under one-year contracts, and they can  use as many applications as they need for their individual needs.
• 50 percent of the suppliers are small and midsized businesses
• government is not going to allow big business to monopolize the cloud
• technology gives public midsized businesses the ability to take part in  government computing. It will also allow businesses with legacy equipment to  update their IT departments without updating hardware. By entering the cloud,  speed will be increased and costs will decrease
• By placing much of the company's data into the cloud, the company doesn't have  to worry about hardware costs. The hosting site pays for all the hardware for a  monthly cost

• Less equipment means a smaller need for IT personnel. However, new positions  in cloud configuration and  analysis will open up for IT. Those currently working in the IT department of a  company researching cloud possibilities may want to consider a little schooling  to get familiar with cloud infrastructures and analysis.
• The CloudStore will sell four main service types: Infrastructure-as-a-service  (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), software-as-a-service (SaaS), and  specialist cloud services.
• There are no plans for the United States to do anything similar, but you can bet  the world is watching closely to see if it is successful

• There will be some impact to American companies as British businesses turn to  their own government cloud. Businesses that were outsourcing to American  companies will no longer pay for utilizing tools they can buy locally. Bundles  will no longer be an acceptable practice, since businesses can purchase only the  tools they need.
• American companies, of course, will still have their own private clouds. Sites  such as YouTube and Netflix are essentially public clouds. Google's Google Docs,  Google+, and the upcoming Google Drive show the company's intent on merging  several clouds and becoming an Internet thunderstorm

9 more annotations...

• Amid complaints that schools were manipulating nursery admissions under Economically Weaker Section category by taking advantage of the sole distance criterion, some of them have now opted for Google Maps to make the selection “fair and transparent
• living within one kilometre of the school will get first preference in admission under the EWS category.
  
• If seats still remain vacant, students residing within three kilometres of the school will be eligible for admission. The next limit extends to six kilometres and then beyond it, depending on the availability of seats
• But a few schools, including Ahlcon International in Mayur Vihar, have decided to take help of the freely available technology -- Google Maps and Google Earth. “We wanted to be fair in our process of selection. So we employed all the options available to us, including Google Maps. It’s the most transparent way to ascertain the distance between the school and the residence of a child
• All schools in the city should adopt such innovative ways to help put an end to confusion surrounding the issue of distance. There have been complaints by parents last year as well as this year that schools often manipulate the distance factor to give preference to children of their choice

3 more annotations...

• We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone, anywhere. All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if [they] are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal or an adult returning to the classroom after 20 years. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to [everyone] completely free of charge," the Academy's website states.
• Free college education with online classes that can be taken at a student's own pace is appealing to those who need an alternative to the traditional university style of education like USD's
• When asked about the kinds of people he sees taking the classes he responded that he was surprised at how motivated people were when given a different way of learning. During the interview, Khan also found these were the people who failed out of high school or the early stages of college and disliked the traditional way of academics but really excelled when given an alternative way to educate themselves.
• Khan Academy which gives them an opportunity at gaining the education they may have once given up on
• One of Khan's main goals that differs from the traditional university style of education like USD's is a heightened focus on internships and gaining experience in the field. It is not about making copies and getting coffee, but rather getting involved in an organization of the students' interests and shaping their educational schedule around that.
• An internship today at Google is optimizing an algorithm that researchers at universities don't even have access to. I would say the interns that we had this past summer were doing far more rigorous theory than they would do in their coursework," Khan said.
• Students learn from a combination of classroom and internship experience. An internship allows them to apply what they have learned in the classroom. Many internships are not as rigorous as the one described by Khan at Google. Still internships offer a unique learning opportunity

5 more annotations...