The L.A. Times reported yesterday that in an unanimous decision, the Los Angeles City Counsel chose to move close to 30,000 city employees – the entire L.A. public service system – to Google’s GMail e-mail provider.  This makes L.A. the largest city in the nation to make the move to Google Apps.

What is Google Apps?  I’ve got a video for that:

Likewise, Universities around the world have the option to make the switch- for free!  The city of Angels will spend nearly $7.25 million dollars to make the switch, but to put that in comparison, it’s a matter of public record that the University of Wyoming spent more than half that fee to give a like number of students, faculty, and staff Exchange 2007 accounts featuring 200MB (yeah, megabytes…) of storage, no voice, no messaging, no cloud docs, and only limited VOIP to inbox messaging.

Confused?  You wont be after reading this document: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html

If you’d like, I’ll paraphrase: Google’s engineers will install Google Application Servers (GMail, google docs, VOIP and chat, etc) on your campus, integrate the software with your current academic management software (the programs running your school), and migrate all your user data. And if that wasn’t enough, they’ll turn the keys over to your IT guys!  That’s right, they’ll do the all the work for free, then give your guys the all the power.
Questions? We’ve got you covered: https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139019

But why?
Because Google is a Stanford project, and offering free systems to universities is their way of giving back.

For comparisons sake, here’s the story of Arizona State, a school twice the size of the University of Wyoming.

Google Apps have been picked up as a major tool for a number of businesses and schools over the last few years because of the unique level of collaboration offered.  Other companies like Apple with iWork.com, and Microsoft with Live.com, have tried to bridge the gap in their own office products by integrating near-Google App-like product support.  Unfortunately for them, the problem with playing catch up, is that you’re still behind the leader.

So why Google Apps in academics?  Prof Hacker has a lengthy write-up, but let me sum it up with a few points.  First and foremost, it’s free and accessible to all.  If your school doesn’t maintain a Google Apps domain, you can simply sign up for a Google.com account and having your students do the same (or have them use the account they likely already have) and you’re good to go.

GMail has a number of benefits, but for now, let’s look at Google Docs:

So, what does this mean for you as a teacher or administrator?
Sharing with collaborators
A Google Doc is created by a document owner (or initially uploaded, as Google Docs will import Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text files) who can then set viewing and editing permissions for others. So your colleagues, students, higher-ups can have complete editorial access, or just be able to view the document at your discretion.  What this enables then is the ability to be sure that when you and the boss edit a document, neither of you has to worry about who has the most current version.  For teachers, there’s no more worrying about getting ‘corrupted files’ or “my dog peed on my keybaord” excuses… that is what kids say these days right?

Rough Drafts on demand
Of particular use in the Humanities is Google Docs revisions feature- which allows authors and viewers of documents to scroll through a ‘history’ of edits made to thkeybaordnt.  Presto- student editorial practices relieved.  Let’s face facts eh, no one keeps rough drafts anymore.  Not unless the teacher specifically demands a hand written draft.  Even this post was written, edited, and completed in one step- score one for automatic spelling, syntax, and grammar correction.  With the Revisions feature, histories of edits are kept by default.  Revisions on demand.

Spread Sheets and Power Point Presentations are welcome
Those additional features I mentioned about.  In addition to working with rich text documents, Google Docs allows the import, manipulation, and creation of Excel spread sheets, and Power Point presentations- among other file formats.  What does this mean?  It means that figures are available to collaborators are they are created,  and presentations are available where ever you can get to your Google Apps list.  Pretty hand for the jet setting administrator in your life eh?

Regardless of your size, a large institution or an individual teacher, Google Docs represents a leap forward in collaborative business and educational computing that is well worth looking into.  I use Google’s Apps, including most of it’s beta Apps such as Voice, and can attest that life as a student is much easier when everything you’ve done, will do, or could need, is as far away as the nearest web browser.  Of course, you can keep hard copies ofGoogle’sing too, but as access to the web blankets the globe, there’s less and less reason to take advantage of the communications advances it brings.