Iowa’s AEAs to Provide K-12 Schools With Google’s Online Tools

The AEAs are entering into an exciting agreement with Google to provide all K-12 schools in Iowa with free access to Google Apps for Education. Our state’s 550,000 students and educators will have the opportunity to be connected to a common e-mail, chat and calendar system (Gmail), cloud collaboration tools (Google Docs & Groups) and multimedia tools (Google Sites & Video) that will enable them to work together and learn more effectively. AEAs are also eligible to use these tools. Google announced its agreement with Iowa at the International Society for Technology in Education Conference on June 28 in Denver.

Iowa will be only the third state in the nation (Oregon was the first, Colorado was the second) to provide these innovative tools to its schools. Iowa, however, will be the first to provide the tools to both public and non-public schools and to provide trained consultants to work with each school.

AEA consultants will receive formal certification in Google Apps and participate in hands-on training. Consultants will then apply this training to help teachers in their local schools learn how to use Google Apps effectively in the classroom. In addition, the consultants will be just an e-mail or a phone call away to answer questions or to follow-up with implementation advice. Students and educators will be able to begin using their new tools as the 2010-2011 school year gets underway.

Schools are able to choose whether they want to opt-in to the initiative. Those that do will see a savings in their IT budgets, and most importantly, will be teaching students the skills they’ll need to use these types of digital tools in the workplace.

“We know this will be a great partnership between the AEAs and our local schools,” Brent Siegrist, Director of AEA Services, said. “Our schools already have established relationships with our consultants and trust their expertise with technology. There may be many schools that are already using Google Apps, but they can now be formally trained to use them and have consistency across their districts.”

If you receive questions about Google Apps from school personnel, let them know the information above, and that each AEA will have two or three consultants who will be assigned to be Google Apps trainers/contacts. Those consultants’ names will be announced when they are confirmed.

In the meantime, if you have any major questions about the AEA/Google agreement, contact Andy Crozier, Coordinator of Digital Learning Technology at Grant Wood AEA, at acrozier@aea10.k12.ia.us.