14 DAY TRIAL // Google has scored a big victory for its Google Apps suite getting the New York state to bring the communication and collaboration suite to its K12 students. It's the largest US state to date to do so and represents a growing trend among educational institutions to move to the cloud.
"New York state is making changes to prepare students for this future, implementing a host of initiatives designed to incorporate the development of 21st century skills into the state’s core learning objectives," Jaime Casap, Google Apps Education Manager, wrote.
"As a product of the New York state public education system, I couldn’t be more excited to announce one of these endeavors—a new K-12 initiative that will bring powerful communication and collaboration tools to the more than 3.1 million students and hundreds of thousands of teachers throughout New York state," she added.
Note that the announcement is not necessarily that Google Apps will be rolled out to the 3.1 million students, but that schools in the state will have the option of deploying Apps if they wish to.
Google is working with a number of educational institutions and organizations to ensure that schools will have the necessary information and support for schools wanting to implement the tools.
697 public schools, but also non-public and even charter schools will also have access to the resources. The staff will be instructed on how to deploy, manage and use the Google Apps suite.
Oregon, Iowa, Colorado and Maryland have already opted for Google Apps. However, New York is the largest US state to do so to date. Already, Google says, eight million students and teachers use Google Apps.
Google Apps Education is free, but offered only to educational institutions. For Google, the big draw is in getting students using the Google applications at an early age and then, hopefully, bringing the tools with them at their future workplaces.