This is what scares Bill

February 24th, 2007 | by Tim Wilson |

Google launched another salvo against Microsoft last Thursday when it announced Google Apps Premier Edition, a subscription service that offers enterprise support for Google’s email, chat, word processing, spreadsheet, and web page creation tools. Wired has a short article that describes some of the pros and cons of the Google Apps package. Everyone knew this was coming, and the fact that Google has signed up some huge corporations gives them a little more credibility right off the bat.

So is this a good deal for a school district? There would have to be a significant discount over the current $50/user/year cost. I pay about $35 for a copy of Microsoft Office currently and that doesn’t expire after 12 months. I love the collaborative features of Google Docs, and I think it would meet the needs of our staff and students 99% of the time.

Other concerns:

  • We have to upgrade our district’s bandwidth anyway, but we would need a lot more to support extensive use of Google Apps. That would add even more to the cost.
  • Would it be legal to store confidential information about students on Google’s servers?
  • We’d need something to replace PowerPoint for teacher and student presentations. It wouldn’t break my heart to give up PowerPoint though.
  • I’m not sure where I’d start trying to convince teachers that changing to a web-based office suite is a good idea.

I’ll be keeping my eyes open for news of educational pricing from Google.

Update: Within minutes of posting this I found a reference to Google Apps Education Edition. You can remove ads from Gmail for students, and they claim to support single sign-on. I’ll sign up and report back with a review.

Update again: It looks like the Education Edition is limited to post-secondary institutions. I tried to sign up and found that they require a .edu domain name.

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  1. 5 Responses to “This is what scares Bill”

  2. By SLP on Feb 24, 2007 | Reply

    Thanks for posting this — I ran over to check it out. They donote that an elementary school (thus, K-12) can have it, too — just that the edu domain makes it automatic, whereas you have to contact them to get under the education license otherwise.

  3. By Tim Wilson on Feb 24, 2007 | Reply

    I missed that note. I’ll follow up and try it out. Thanks for the tip! -Tim

  4. By Tim Lauer on Feb 24, 2007 | Reply

    Hi Tim,
    I have lewiselementary.org registered. Can take advantage of all the apps and such. We do our state testing online with a company based in Florida or some such place. I don’t see much difference. As for powerpoint clone, I hear one is coming, but then again, I don’t see PowerPoint as a very good tool. I’d much rather have students organize images and use them in an oral presentation rather than having words fly across the screen.. :-)

  5. By edbong on Feb 24, 2007 | Reply

    Is Google Apps really a replacement for Office? I always see it much more as a competition for MS Exchange. yes, its a good file storage - and yes - its good to collaborate… but will everybody be online all the time?

    But there are some solutions that can be done over the API (like replication). We for example are now developing an FREE open source “business application platform” (think salesforce.com). Our first application is working tightly integrated with GOOGLE APPS. Check it out if you are interested. http://www.applicationexchange.com

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