Simmons Technology is pleased to report that we have completed more than half of all faculty and staff Google Apps for Education migrations. The project is moving forward on schedule and should be complete by late May.

As we move forward, we would like to remind you that Meeting Maker will be decommissioned at the end of June. If your department is now using Google Calendar and you want your Meeting Maker account removed, please contact the Service Desk. For more information, and tips for moving your meetings to Google Calendar, please see our full Meeting Maker FAQ.

If you have started using Google Apps and you have questions, you can find many answers on the project site or from within Google Apps by clicking on “More” and then “Google Apps Training” in the black bar at the top of your email. We’re also hosting trainings every week, where we cover Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and the other available apps. To find an upcoming session, check the training calendar.

Beginning this month, we’ll also be providing some advanced tips and tricks to make Google Apps even more useful. Here’s the first one: Did you know that you can drag messages to a label right from your inbox? Just click and hold on or near the checkbox next to a message and drag it to the label you want to use. Your message has been organized with one click and without leaving your inbox.

As more faculty move to Google Apps for Education, we want to provide some ideas for how you can use the apps in your classes. We would also like to hear from you. If you have interesting or innovative use cases, please send an email to [email protected]. We would be happy to feature your stories in an upcoming newsletter.

Create
You can use Google Drive to quickly create and share lecture notes and presentations. Gather the information you need, create your doc or presentation in Drive, and then click “share” and copy the link to send to your students.

Collaborate
In addition to creating your own documents and presentations, you can also use Drive to start projects and then invite students to collaborate. Students can also use Drive to create assignments and then share them with you in order to get feedback. Drive allows for real-time chat, multiple comment conversations, and maintains a full history of revisions. You can work with students to develop a paper or presentation and track their progress as you provide feedback.

Collect
Need to gather information from students at the start of the semester? Looking for an easy way to create appointments during your office hours? Try Google Forms. You can create forms from within Drive in order to gather feedback quickly and track the results in a spreadsheet.

Empower
Your students can use Google Sites to compile portfolios or gather resources for a group project. Sites allows for embedding of documents, spreadsheets, images, videos, and more, making it the perfect place to create and display projects while gaining valuable technology and communication experience.

To find out more about each of the apps and what they can do, visit the Google Apps project site and click on the links under the “Using Google Apps” section.

As of today, Technology has migrated approximately one-third of all faculty and staff to Google Apps for Education, including the School of Social Work and the School of Management. In the coming weeks, we’ll be working with GSLIS and the School of Nursing and Health Sciences to transition them to Google Apps as well.

With Spring semester moving along quickly, we want to make everyone aware that we’re hosting four drop-in training sessions every week on Tuesday and Thursday. Three of these sessions cover the basics of Gmail and Google Calendar, while the remaining session focuses on the other apps, like Drive and Sites. You can find an upcoming session by viewing the training calendar available here. You can also access additional resources on the Google Apps project site: googleapps.simmons.edu.

Over the last month, we’ve been busy helping staff members in the Library, Student Life, and elsewhere migrate their email to Google Apps. As we move into February, we’ll be finishing migrations for most of the administrative staff and focusing our efforts on staff and faculty in each college. To find out when you will be migrated, please check the timeline on the Google Apps project site. As we get closer to your migration date, our team will reach out to you get some additional information and set a date to move your email to Google Apps.

In the meantime, you can do a few things to prepare for the move. We know that, for most people, this is a big change, and we want to make it as painless as possible. To help, we’ve gathered resources on our project site, including answers to frequently asked questions, and introductions to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and more. We’re also holding weekly drop-in trainings where you can watch a short presentation on Google Apps, ask questions, and get help with your account if you need it. Starting in February, we’ll have four sessions every week. Take a look at the schedule and find a time that works for you.

We also want to take this opportunity to reiterate a couple of important notes about the migration. First, your email address will not change. You can still use your @simmons.edu address as you always have. In addition, all of your email will come along with you to your Google Apps account. We’re migrating all of the email on your Simmons computer or on the Simmons server to your new account. When you log in for the fist time at gmail.simmons.edu, you’ll see all of the email that was in your inbox previously. Finally, events scheduled in Meeting Maker will not be migrated to your new account. There is no foolproof way to do this without potentially compromising your previously created meetings and events. To learn more about moving your events from Meeting Maker to Google Calendar, please see the step-by-step instructions available here.

We hope that the hands-on approach we’re taking to this project will make the transition smooth for you. It will take some time to learn new email and calendar systems, but the long-term benefits of moving to Google Apps are many. If you have specific questions about the migration process, please reach out to Roy Balcom ([email protected]). If you have questions about using Google Apps once you’ve been migrated, take a look at the FAQs on the project site or contact the Service Desk at 617-521-2222.