Getting Started with Google

Why work with Google tools?

· > Continuous innovation – Put the web's rapid pace of innovation to work for your business.

· > Smoother information sharing – Improve traditional software with more efficient collaboration.

· > Worker mobility – Access your data from anywhere. Employees can be productive from any computer.

· > Information access control – Each piece of content can be as private or as public as necessary.

Enhance Your District’s Productivity

Whether your district or school uses Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, iWork or a different productivity suite, employees shouldn't have to struggle with their software to collaborate. Google Apps makes collaborating with those software applications work more smoothly.

Traditional "collaboration" falls short in today's workplace

Sharing with attachments is inefficient.

· Attachments can be too large to send over email, and take up inbox space.

· Coworkers with incompatible software can't even open your attachments.

· It's easy to lose track of which version of an attachment you should work on.

· Someone gets stuck reconciling everyone's asynchronous edits.

File shares can create workflow bottlenecks.

· Everyone gets locked out of a file when one person forgets to check it back in.

· Coworkers with incompatible software can't even open shared files.

· Teams need IT support to set up new file shares.

· It's difficult to browse or search across multiple file shares.

Google Apps smooths the process

Google Docs enhances your district’s productivity suite and eliminates the need to collaborate with attachments. Employees can start a project with software like Microsoft Office, and use Google Docs to share files with coworkers for collaborative editing. Everyone accesses the same online copy of the file in Google Docs, so there are no attachment compatibility problems, inbox storage quota issues, or versions to reconcile. When the group is done editing, you can keep the file in Google Docs, or export it back to the original format.

Sharing knowledge is simple with Google Sites. Free-form text, file attachments, videos, photos, and other types of information can be organized all together. It's so intuitive that every employee can contribute; no special technical skills are required so coworkers can create rich sites without burdening IT for support. Best of all, Google search is built-in, so employees can find company information instantaneously.

Where to start:

1) Gmail: The cornerstone of Gmail apps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJT3pagjd8s