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We want to and will make it easy for schools to keep their staff, pupils, parents, partners, other stake-holders and wider community informed, updated and engaged.

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It's so easy even 7 year old children can do it. If you are able to move a mouse, click a few buttons and string a few sentences together you can maintain a cutting edge site.

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school website yourself. What will you write today's school news to be?

Archive page for Tuesday, 29 August 2006

 Tu, Aug 29, 2006
Google, the new 900lb gorilla
Google's offering Google Apps for Education. Just now it's Gmail, Calendaring, and Instant Messaging. Later, I'd guess word processing, spreadsheets, perhaps even blogging.

What's nice is that you can put your own school logo on it, administer (delete and add) accounts, and there's an API to play with.

What's bad? Adverts.

What's really nice for me? Gmail! And Calendaring. And an API :-)
  • So many of the schools I walk into have an LEA built email system that's OK. Crappy spam filtering and a small capacity, as well as a lack of features make it usable but way behind Gmail/Hotmail and other free offerings. Adding extra accounts is not easy. No way would the school's ITC want to add accounts for children. Now, this could be possible. Imagine 7, 8, 8 and 10 year olds with email accounts!
  • I don't have to build a calendaring system! This is a useful feature, but not a killer. Certainly it'd be neat for a school to show a calendar of term time, trips, special days, etc,.
  • I love messing with APIs. Thinking off the top of my head of joining the blog's archives with the calendar. Did have a quick play with Google Map's APIs: planning school trips and such, but didn't think it another killer.
  • Certainly, my scripting environment will be a boon in joining up and mashing these new online apps when the come: word processing and spreadsheets. Who knows what great little school customisations I can hack.
  • Schools won't need to pay Microsoft excessive fees for Word and Excel.
  • There's all those back end MIS functions that are now more possible for me too.
What's really bad for me? I'm a little worried about the probability of blogger becoming a real competitor in the school space.
  • But I'm sure I can cope (problems are opportunities :-) Blogger's current feature set is waaay behind, and with my customer service against the monolith that's Google, there's always a place for sweet little me and mine.
So, the short of it is, I'm going to swim with the beast. There's a few schools that I have domain control over, so I'll be asking the Heads if they want some Google stuff on their IT list. I know it'll be good for the school, good for the Head's CV and good for Walsallschool's business profile to be working with Google.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 29/8/06; 11:16:24 AM to the Education news dept.
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Google, the new 900lb gorilla



Ads are everywhere (in the US)
eSchool: Ads pay for school web sites: "Instead of charging districts a fee up front to design, upgrade, and expand the capabilities of their school web sites, the company draws its revenue from ads placed on various web pages operated by the school system.

The ads will be targeted to a specific audience--meaning if an outside user, such as a parent, visits the district's school lunch page, he or she might see an ad placed by a local supermarket, for example. If a user visits a page about school athletics, that person might see an ad for a local retailer, such as Dick's Sporting Goods, and so on.

As an added benefit, the school district also will participate in a special rebate program. That program, which requires visitors to register their credit card and other information on the school district's web site, will pay a 5-percent commission to the district for every sale completed by a registered member via an EdNets ad.

Meyers said he has no idea how much money, if any, the district likely will see as a result of the rebate program. What money the district does make will be used to establish an endowment fund to support professional development, student scholarships, grants, and a variety of other activities."

I've been trying Google ads here. And on some other sites. Frankly, I don't see it being worth it. Certainly I don't think many UK schools would like ads on their sites, especially ones they had not much choice or control over. McDonald's or Coke being recent examples. The US is different.

But I do like the idea of smaller brands, or rather local shops. Say a school uniform shop, a local stationers, or creche. But the cost of getting that ad, creating the ad, would be prohibitive, IMHO. When that company thinks of the views the ad will get... Hmmmm. Maybe not so prohibative.

But then again most people get their school uniforms from Tesco these days :-(
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 29/8/06; 9:54:39 AM to the Ads for schoools dept.
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Ads are everywhere (in the US)



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