Live@edu vs. Google Apps for Education

Our district is currently looking at going to a free email hosted solution with the capability for online storage and document creation. We are looking at these two.

I am finding that Microsoft has recently put a lot of resources into their platform and it looks pretty interesting.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/liveedu-grows-evolves-into-offi...

Has anyone made this decision/comparison recently? I would love to hear what you all have to say.

Tags: apps, google, live@edu

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Permalink Reply by Claude Almansi on March 19, 2011 at 12:00pm

Actually, I was able to pretty quickly sort out what were the Didasca-induced issues from what Google Apps are.

Thanks for the Webinar suggestion: I might share there some doubts I still have re, in Google Apps themselves, the easiness for collaborators to make copies in their Google Apps account, then share the copy with other people in the same Google Apps scheme and/or with other contacts. This seems to raise both privacy and copyright issues (as the copier appears as the "owner" of the copy).

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Permalink Reply by Dodie Ainslie on January 21, 2012 at 2:10pm

Thanks Derrick for this reply- great information. I have also felt that as educators we simply can't continue to pay the high price for Microsoft when there are alternatives that are free. We also are giving our students life long digital skills since Google is available for all.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Rita Oates on March 19, 2011 at 8:09pm

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/07/14/nyc-schools-to-deploy-free-em...

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/epals-microsoft-liveedu-k-12-ga...

Have you looked at this alternative to the two you mention? Choice of New York City Schools after a year of study.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Rita Oates on April 23, 2011 at 5:40am

If you carefully read the article you link above, it's an agreement with one institution, NYIT, and no mention of the state Dept. of Ed. involvement in any way. There was no RFP that was awarded. Dig deeper, and see who signed this. Someone at NYIT. As a former investigative reporter, I would consider this a great example of "press release puffery." How many people just reprinted the press release without digging into the facts? The first thing a decent reporter would have done is to note this omission and call the state Dept. of Ed. in Albany to get clarification or a quotation. It's not the same story then. But few media outlets have staff to dig into stories these days; too many just reprint press releases.

By comparison, the New York City DOE announcement of ePals SchoolMail365 was following an RFP. Google did not win that RFP for the 1.1 million students in New York City. SchoolMail365 from ePals did.

They wanted educationally related features and abilities that were impossible to get in Google's email, especially for children under age 13.

Note also in the CNN article this chilling comment:

"...The cost to Google per user is so insignificant, it is offset by the opportunity of getting a future customers ready for Google Apps for Enterprise."

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Permalink Reply by Brian McLane on April 22, 2011 at 9:33pm

I recently read that Microsoft is replacing its Office Live apps with Office 365, which will be a subscription-based service. I don't know if they will still offer Office LIve for free, and I don't have the link to the article.

Our school is looking at adopting Google Apps for Education.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Siegl on April 23, 2011 at 12:47pm

365 will replace live--It seems that all of the services that are offered as part of live, and most of the 365 services will be free for students, with a charge for faculty/staff and for some of the higher end features for students. The services for which there are comparable analogs in the core Google Apps for edu appear to be free to students--the big issue is the cost for staff. http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20028156-75.html

It seems like it is a step back in charging for staff, but a step forward in offering more free services to students.

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Permalink Reply by Roger Grant on May 17, 2011 at 3:49pm

Google apps has some issues with connecting from schools. My students often get the message "trying to reach google". See the discussion here. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Docs/thread?tid=0bfb...