Google Apps Guidance Needed
I have a school account established for my teachers and students but I am stuck. I want to set up what the kids are using as their homepage. From the past several days I see that iGoogle is not the option any longer, but instead use a start page. But how do I go about limiting all the inappropriate widgets. (And why don't the girlie widgets go away when it is turned into a school resource?) Do I have to create a start page for each of the kids and lay it out for them? If that is the case, do I make the teachers' start pages too so that the students can have a link to their pages? I was wanting a homepage for the students with an RSS feed (maybe), Google Calendar, a to-do list or agenda planner, short cut to Google Docs and later to add the Google Chat feature. Is there anybody that has already gone through this process that might be interested in helping guide me? I would SOOO appreciate it!
Tags: Google, GoogleApps
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Allison Rousseau on -
I am not sure how to help you. I will look into it...as you have not made me curious about doing this in my classroom. What grade are you working to do this with?
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Permalink Reply by Melissa Smith on -
All of the faculty, 5th, and 6th grades. It will be a fun year!!
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Permalink Reply by Allison Rousseau on
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That should have read....."as you HAVE made me curious". I apologize for the mis type.
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Permalink Reply by Melissa Smith on
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That's actually kinda funny b/c when I read it I never saw the word not. But now that I am reading it, HA HA HA!
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Permalink Reply by David Kapuler on -
If you have an educational account for Google, you will have an API. Take that API it should be some crazy number w/ letters and there is a place you have to email that states you want to remove any gadget not created by Google. We had the same issue. The problem w/ Google Apps is you have to look for your answers in forums, there really is no help desk, being free. I mean you can send an email and there is a number but who knows how that will go, look for your answer here....
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=45473
Hope this helps.
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Permalink Reply by Melissa Smith on
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I have looked at this start page thing and I think that I am lost with it. Does that mean that I create a page for each of the teachers and students with what I want on it in regards to widgets? Wasn't there a big turn off inappropriate widgets one click thing in the admin tools?
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Permalink Reply by kathleenn on -
Melissa,
Just saw this post a few minutes ago about enabling GoogleApps for Education. This is the school-based system which will allow you to control all the features you want. This is different than just having a school or student google account setup. It advises purchasing a separate domain outside of your school domain since Google Apps becomes the main home page.
I haven't tried the API approach but from what I have read, this assumes you have the Google Apps for Education installed.
See the article for more info:
http://www.smeech.net/smeech/2009/7/29/process-of-setting-up-google...
Good Luck!
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Permalink Reply by David Kapuler on
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That is correct, we have a purchased Educational Google solution for our district, also being filtered through Gaggle. This turned out to be 3 dollars per student....
https://www.gaggle.net/googleaps.html
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Permalink Reply by Melissa Smith on
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Why didn't you use the gmail account for the students? The teachers can monitor the students' emails.
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Permalink Reply by Melissa Smith on
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Thanks for the link! I will be going through this site tonight!
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Permalink Reply by David Kapuler on
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I created the start page, that each student sees. They can alter it if they want, but they can't get those inappropriate gadgets such as: babe of the month or Hooter Girls.
We have gMail filtered because while you can monitor things it doesn't prevent the students from actually swearing or bullying. If you have filtered through Gaggle it filters all mail, so if a bad word is typed or sent to a student it comes to the admin/teacher. Gaggle also has filtered chats, blogging, and discussion boards. This is what my district uses and I set it up.
This is the start page I created...
http://partnerpage.google.com/mail.greendale.k12.wi.us
As to your question about creating more then one start page, the answer is no. You create a basic one for your district, if you have the EDU version. All users will see that. When we first purchased it, we had it for 250 users. We piloted it w/ our 7th graders/teachers and now are pushing it out to all of the Middle School, so more licenses must be purchased.
I hope this helps.
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Permalink Reply by Dave Gabor on -
I used Google Apps with my third grade class this year. I installed the standard edition on my own hosted server and turned off gmail (you have some monitoring capabilities, but it's still too wide open in my opinion) and some other options to keep it as a Microsoft word alternative. My kids are lucky to have a computer with access at home let alone word and powerpoint. It was a huge success and we will be using it this year.
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