To hear more about how schools like Boise State are using Google Apps, Google is hosting a series of free education-focused webinars starting on Thursday, June 25 with a discussion led by Arizona State University on Thursday, June 25. We hope you'll join us!
In early 2007, we at Boise State University learned of Arizona State University's deployment of Google Apps Education Edition to their student population. At that time, we were at a crossroads between upgrading email for employees and students and pressure to change the email application that was in place since 1996. We recognized ASU's move to Google Apps for students as a shift in application delivery to supported end-users – the move to the "cloud" of Internet-delivered services and support.
By choosing Google Apps for Education, Boise State could redirect resources and personnel away from an ever increasing drain on budget dollars and support time, to other critical education-focused applications and still have a leading edge communication and collaboration platform.
Boise State administrators and faculty were visionary in agreeing with the movement of email, calendaring and document collaboration to Google. Collaboration between students, between students and faculty and between staff are all now easily facilitated. It was as big a change as the integration between email and calendaring in the late 1990s. The early 2000 mantra of "anywhere, anytime on the web" was finally a reality.
The rationale for deploying Google Apps for Education to Boise State students was predicated on the University's strategic vision of "Charting the Course," which defines a road map for Boise State University's goal to become a Metropolitan Research University of Distinction. Taking our directive from the University's Vision Statement, we contacted Google to begin the process of providing Google Apps for Education to the campus.
We started with the task of moving all student accounts to Google Apps in 2007. This equated to the migration of more than 20,000 accounts. The student account move was smooth and adopted with minimal support. The students were very adaptive to change. The major hurdles of a mail system migration were not seen by the end user group, as we linked authentication and account creation to the University identity management system.
Soon after we successfully implemented the student mail system, we contemplated the possibility of moving faculty and staff to Google Apps. The prospect of migrating faculty and staff from an enterprise messaging system to Google Apps was altogether different from displacing the simple mail system our students used. We accepted the idea that a transition would be more difficult than the student move, but we believed that once the tools were in place, and people acclimated to the functions and features of Gmail and Calendaring, the University would be in a better position to communicate and collaborate.
Security was the initial hurdle put in front of the move by most of the colleges and departments. We began an education campaign to explain that not only was Google a leader and innovator in the application area, they excelled at security and privacy in the services they provided to their educational partners. Google has offices of information security personnel compared to the handful at Boise State.
Now that the migration of our 3,000 faculty and staff is complete, we have a new realization: deploying Google Apps and reallocating resources is just the beginning. We have new tools to explore and share; collaboration was the unexpected silver lining of the Google Apps suite. Having Google Apps as a keystone technology establishes the foundation from which we can support the University's strategic vision of Charting the Course and its commitment to academic excellence, public engagement, vibrant culture and exceptional research.
After our migration was done, we hosted a celebratory lunch for those involved in the project. All of the dishes were delicious, but the highlight was the cake, courtesy of Tonya, our in-house pastry chef. Yes, it is entirely edible, and it tasted amazing too!
Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education Edition team
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