In the spring of 2012, I was hired to be the Webmaster at Immaculate Conception High School, a Catholic co-educational high school in Montclair, New Jersey. My charge was to update the content, media, functionality, and visibility of the site. Subsequently, the website (www.ichspride.org) became a vital instrument to share school information, activities, and media. Students, faculty, and parents started to look at the website again to learn about school activities, and the website became a recruiting tool for incoming students. As I revamped the website, I noticed that the email system being used by the school was outdated, clunky, and was barely in use by anyone in the school. It needed to be replaced by something that would enable the school community to communicate with each other effectively.
I had heard about Gmail being used as an email solution for educational, non-profit, and business organizations. Through research, emails and phone calls with Google, I found that our school qualified for Google’s free Google Apps for Education program. We could retain our domain named email (ichspride.org), but it would be powered by Google. With this program, we would be able to migrate our email to Gmail and we would also have access to Google Drive and numerous Google Apps – for free! The cost factor was very important to us we have a very limited budget.
The principal of ICHS was at first skeptical. She preferred interacting with students and faculty face-to-face and through paper memos. I was able to convince her to make the switch by making the argument that communication within the school would increase tremendously. She gave me the go-ahead in September of 2012, at the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year. With the help of Google representatives, I migrated all email from our old account to the Gmail platform.
Miraculously, due to Google’s excellent product and technical reliability, everything was migrated seamlessly and faculty (even our once hesitant principal) started using the new email (see
Figure 1: The ICHS e-mail interface powered by Google.
One of the greatest achievements has been the impact of Google Apps for Education on students and faculty. Faculty were provided with a workshop in February 2013, given by myself and the Director of Technology, and were presented with information on how to use Google Drive and apps such as Documents, Presentations, Drawing, and Spreadsheets. As an in-class exercise, faculty had to create a drawing in pairs and share it with the workshop presenters. The entire faculty – from novice to advanced users – became very engaged in the exercise. It was amazing to observe a veteran teacher of thirty years working with a recent college graduate on a Google drawing. It proved that this platform works for a wide range of people and is perfect for use in many educational settings.
Currently, all computer classes at ICHS are using Google Drive. In freshman and sophomore classes, students have created drawings, forms, and spreadsheets and must share them with the teacher in order to receive credit for their assignment. In my junior computer classes, students save all of their edited Photoshop work to their own Google Drive and then share the completed assignments with me (see Figure 2). I grade their work via my own Google Drive and email them their grades.
Google Drive benefits students in many ways. They do not need to bring a Flash drive to computer classes anymore; less work is lost; all of their work is in one place; and they can access their files anytime, anywhere. By being able to share their work with online, teachers can keep track of which students are completing their assignments and which ones are not. Faculty use of our Google ichspride.org email has gone up – as a calculated guess – about 90%. Now, both senior and junior faculty members alike are reading their email. In addition, all freshmen, sophomores, and juniors have their own “ichspride.org” email account powered by Google.
The success of Google Apps for Education at ICHS has surpassed my expectations. When I began investigating this product, I knew it would be a great asset to the school but I never imagined
Figure 2: A snapshot of my Google Drive with student work.
how quickly everyone in the school community would adopt it. Remarkably, a student told me his teacher, who has been teaching for over thirty years and never used school email before, emailed her students on a Sunday and gave them an assignment. For this teacher, this adoption of this new platform is just amazing. For all education institutions, Google Apps for Education is a wonderful way to harness the power of Google to increase communication, collaboration, creativity, and productivity.
In the future, we hope to increase the use of Google Apps to increase productivity with faculty, in particular with the use of shared documents and spreadsheets. There are so many benefits of this system; it enables so much more communication, collaboration, and productivity. In addition, students will be more prepared for college by having knowledge of this form of Cloud Computing. We will also introduce faculty and students to more Google Apps such as Google Sites. With Google Sites, faculty can create their own website to house their homework and assignments and students can create portfolio and personal websites. In addition, we hope to receive a grant to buy several Chrome Books for students and faculty. We believe Chrome Books will become just as important in schools and universities as iPads are now.
Cloud computing really is the future. Google Apps for Education is highly recommended for primary and secondary schools as well as community colleges, technical, vocational schools and small four-year colleges. It has proved to be an incredible educational, communication, and collaboration tool for Immaculate Conception High School.
Amy B. Popp is a librarian, webmaster, public relations coordinator, and technology teacher at Immaculate Conception High School in Montclair, NJ. She holds an MSLIS from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. She plans to pursue Google Apps certification and continue exploring new uses for Google Apps for Education in primary, secondary, and higher education. Her e-mail address is amybpopp@gmail.com .
Author’s note: A version of this article will be included in the Summer NJLA Newsletter as well.