We are well underway with the Google Apps for Education transition. Lots of teachers, staff members and administrators are loving it. Some are still early on in the journey to utilizing Google Apps for Education. So, why are some farther along than others? Well, simply put, it is a journey. Google Apps is a different way of thinking. It is the digital way. This can be a bit disconcerting for some. After all, the way that they are used to working worked right?
Google Apps is really about a mind shift. It can be much more efficient and effective. However, it does require thinking just a little bit differently.
Working digitally provides us with an opportunity to do things more productively. In the past, we would send out calendars and have hundreds of people all typing in the same information on different calendars. Invariably, someone would make a mistake. This would take a great amount for each person. If there were any changes to the calendar, the calendar would have to be sent out again. Then hundreds of people would need to completely review their entire calendar to see what had changed. This could occur through several iterations. Now we simply create a calendar and let people subscribe to the calendar. If anything needs to be adjusted, it is corrected in one place and hundreds of people have a calendar that is correct and up to date. This saves massive amounts of time and decreases communication errors.
Sharing documents is another example. The old way of doing things is to send out and email with an attachment. If feedback is needed or if any corrections need to be made, that means more emails with attachments. The receiver of the emails is now charged with keeping track of which email is the “correct” one. This can lead to lots of wasted time and communication errors as well. This also ends up meaning that people spend lots of time looking at documents and emails that they’ve already looked at. Instead, a shared document can streamline that whole process. Instead of receiving several emails, the individual can view the most current version of the document. The author of the document has complete control over who can see, comment or edit the document. This provides for great flexibility.
This just touches on the possibilities. Sure, in some ways the “old ways” “worked”, but they took a lot of time and are no longer really efficient. People work differently now. It’s time that we reflect the new possibilities.
