Why Google?

Saint Mary's College has been using Google Workspace for Education (formerly G Suite for Education and Google Apps for Education) since the spring of 2013.

What is Google Workspace for Education?

Google Workspace for Education is a suite of web-based messaging and collaboration applications that Google hosts on their own servers. Google provides these applications as a "service," rather than as software you have to download and install. To access these applications, you simply use a web browser on any computer that's connected to the Internet.

Why did we choose Google G Suite for Education?

When choosing a campus-wide communication and collaboration tool/service, we looked for a solution that could provide with us the following benefits:

    • Lower infrastructure costs — All your email will be stored securely on Google's servers, so we won't have to maintain email servers on-site

    • Ability to consolidate our platforms — We can eliminate redundancy by moving all of our email and calendar platforms to Google

    • Lower support costs — Because Google hosts the email and calendar services, there's no more email client software to maintain on your computer

    • Innovative solutions — We can leverage the ongoing creative and technical solutions of Google Workspace to provide students, faculty, and staff with powerful, easy-to-use tools for getting their work done

    • Highly scalable environment — With Google, our email, messaging, calendar, and shared file capacity will grow as it is needed, and we'll avoid the complexity of upgrading storage needs on our own servers

    • Access to services from anywhere, at anytime — A key benefit of the Google-hosted solution is that we can access email, contacts, and calendar from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection, from anywhere in the world

    • More collaboration features — With Google's next-generation applications, we can collaborate with colleagues not only on our campus but globally more easily and efficiently than ever before

  • Immediate communication — Because Google provides Chat and Meet in addition to Mail, we can offer a variety of ways to stay in contact with mebers of our campus community

What does Google Workspace include?

Your Google Apps account includes the following services:

    • Google Mail

    • Google Drive

    • Google Docs

    • Google Sheets

    • Google Slides

    • Google Calendar

    • Google Meet

    • Google Chat

What are the key benefits?

  • Lots of storage — You get unlimited storage for your e-mail, so you can archive all of your email online. You'll no longer need to worry about deleting messages or saving them in offline folders. You will also have unlimited storage for saving files on Google Drive.

  • Enhanced message organization and retrieval — With Google Mail, you'll spend less time managing folders and searching for messages. For example, you can add one or more tags, or "labels," to your messages to organize and store them more efficiently. And with the Google-powered search feature, you can find any message quickly and easily, whether it's in your Inbox or stored in your message archive.

  • Easier calendar sharing — Google Calendar lets you and your team quickly and easily share your calendars with each other and specify the details you want to show. Calendar sharing is a great way to keep each other informed about your schedules. Now it's easier than ever to find out if someone is in a meeting, on a business trip, or on vacation.

  • Integrated chat — With the Google Chat instant messaging application, you can communicate instantly with other people in our organization right from the Mail interface. In addition, all your chats are automatically saved, so you can always retrieve important information later.

  • Real-time collaboration — Using Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and more, that you and your team can view and edit at the same time. You can still use your Microsoft Office products as needed, but now you'll have more options for storing and collaborating on your documents.