Google Apps for Education

Google Apps for Education (GAFE):

What is it and how does it pertain to Grosse Ile Township Schools?

Google Apps for Education is a core suite of productivity applications that Google offers to schools and educational institutions for FREE. These communication and collaboration apps include Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs and Sites, and a GAFE account unlocks access to dozens of other collaborative tools supported by Google. All of these applications exists completely online (or in the cloud), meaning that all creations can be accessed from any device with an Internet connection.

After much research, Grosse Ile Township Schools embraced Google Apps for Education and registered the school domain (web address). After the domain registration was completed, Grosse Ile Township Schools was then granted the ability to administer all teacher and student Google accounts from an online administrative dashboard. Becoming a “Google School District” not only reduced expensive reoccurring licensee fees paid to major software vendors, but also opened the doors to enhanced workplace productivity and innovative classroom instruction and learning. Using GAFE allows administrators, secretaries, teachers, students, and other district staff members to “share” and collaborate on documents, teacher instructional PD, interactive presentations, data spreadsheets, video/audio conferences, informational surveys, student assignments & testing, internal/external work orders, calendar event scheduling, website development and much more with ease.

Another major advantage from going to Google Apps is utilizing the FREE “Google Cloud” to store and access data. This convenient online storage method frees up much of the district’s internal data storage, reduces timely network account management, and eliminates the added expense of purchasing and maintaining costly servers and disk storage arrays.

Explaining Google Apps

Google Apps is a core suite of communication and collaboration applications that allow students to work from any device on documents and projects.

Once a student is enrolled into the district, they are automatically assigned a student ID number and corresponding e-mail address. That e-mail address is accessible within the 10 minutes of them changing their password for the first time.
An "office suite" of tools -- Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and much more -- Which offers the ability to work from anywhere, anytime, and any device.
Due to the fact that all Google Apps are saved to Google Drive (i.e. "The Cloud") - students and staff gain the flexibility to work from any computer or device.
Students and Teachers can seamlessly save work and collaborate both synchronously and asynchronously.