Google at Gananda

 

Gananda Central School District is proud to offer students and staff free software and expanded learning opportunities provided by Google. Google Apps are a wonderful tool to support the new Common Core standards that are based on collaboration, communication and require the use of digital media.

Google Apps is a collection of free online applications. Word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software is available in the “cloud” for our students and staff to use. The benefit of this structure allows flexibility in accessing documents and projects from ANY computer with Internet access. Staff and students can access their school documents from the lab, the classroom, the public library and even from home!

Google Apps for Education is a special setup of the popular Google Apps, tailored specifically for educational institutions. For example, accounts are managed by the school district (and not by Google) and advertisements are turned off. Google Apps for Education allows us to carve off a secure Google area for our staff and students to create, collaborate and share ideas online between each other.

Students need to know: Students will follow school policies for appropriate use when using Internet based services such as Google Apps. These services are considered an extension of the school’s network. Students have no expectation of privacy in their use as school and service administrators have the right and ability to monitor user accounts for policy and security enforcement.

Parents need to know: The student Acceptable Use Policy will be enforced. School staff will monitor student use of applications when students are at school. Parents are responsible for monitoring their child’s use of applications when accessing programs from home. Students are responsible for their own behavior at all times.

Will my student have a Google email or “gmail” account? It depends on what grade they are in. Google Apps for Education assigns a username to each student that looks like an email address. However, Gananda has restricted enabling the Gmail functions by a student's grade level.

3rd and 4th grade level the email functionality is turned off. Anyone outside of our school domain who tries to email them at their “address” will receive notice that the email will not be delivered because of this policy. Likewise, students will not be able to send email using their login.

5th grade students do have email enabled, but only to teachers and other students for collaborative work.

6th, 7th, and 8th grade students have email enabled, but only to teachers and other students for collaborative work.

High School students (grades 9-12) have a fully enabled Gananda Gmail address to be used for communication with teachers, peers, colleges and other instructional activities.

All email is always accessible to District personnel should there be any violations of policy and is filtered by Google for spam.

How can I see what this is all about? We encourage you to login to your student’s Google Apps account with them and have them show you what they are working on.

See more Google Resources:

 

Teachers and library media specialists will be reviewing our District’s acceptable use policy and Internet safety guidelines when they introduce these tools to students. Using online tools responsibly is an important part of the learning experience.