On February 24th, the Connect coalition unveiled yet another bold initiative – the Gmail initiative.
The Gmail initiative aims to bring ‘Google Apps for Education’ to the KU campus, which would make us a leader in efficient, user-friendly, and technologically superior email and communications infrastructure. If put in place, this would integrate all of Google Apps – Gmail, Google Chat, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and the Google Start Page to name a few – with the services that KU offers students.
As far as email goes, KU Outlook email would be replaced by a dedicated and free Gmail system – without ads and made KU-centric by Google. With this come many advantages. Students would have over 6.5 gigabytes of storage for homework, projects, emails, and file storage online. You would never have to delete an email from your professor or another student collaborator again! Gmail has the ‘archive’ and ‘search’ function built in, which would allow you to pull up any email – ever- for reference. You would even be able to keep your “name@ku.edu” address and data after graduation!
The new KU mail system would integrate itself into every other facet of online KU life offered by Google. The benefits of these additional applications are outstanding:
With Google Docs, students can collaborate and share their documents and projects with fellow students and collaborators instantly – and work side by side online in the Google Docs environment!
Google Chat would allow anyone to chat online with fellow students, TAs, and Professors at any time you’re online. It would also make online chatting fun and easy between friends here at KU – we’d all have access to the same chat client! The downloadable application - Google Talk - would also let students call each other over their computers – for free – with only knowing each other’s KU email address. Don’t want to chat? That’s perfectly fine too - it can be customized or disabled to your liking.
Google Calendar would allow students to easily keep track of their schedule, and it would also allow professors to share syllabus calendars with students instantly! Student organizations – as well as the university - would also be able to send all members a schedule to mix into theirs, so that meetings and events won’t be forgotten. They’d be intermingled with yours. Students can share events with other students this way too, making your classes, organizations, and personal life fully integrated with anyone and anything else at KU.
The Start Page will let students find their calendar, email, University content, and any custom content they want – right at their homepage. Logging into your email would no longer be a chore, neither would looking at your schedule – they’d be right on your homepage.
Google Page Creator would be a great tool for any organization or club on campus to utilize. With it, any user can easily create a web page and manage it. Seeing how the web is absolutely essential to life these days, this tool would be great for KU to give to students.
Google would give 24/7 service and support to KU students and administration – still for free. The money that this would free up from KU can be used in other areas of the university that need funding!
Anyone who prefers Microsoft Outlook or any other program would be able to utilize the IMAP support built into Gmail. Microsoft Exchange and other programs that rely on the current KU email system would not be hurt at all. Allowing Google to provide these free services would be seen as a progressive and smart move by the
This is yet another bold and advantageous move of the Connect coalition, who is continually showing that there is room for more than words when it comes to campaigning – there is initiative.
