For students dissatisfied with the unreliablity, sluggishness and 20 megabyte limit of Georgetown’s e-mail service, forwarding GUMail e-mails to a Gmail account has long been a better option. Georgetown should look into implementing Google’s education application, which would provide all the benefits of forwarding to Gmail on a school-wide scale, while saving the University time and money.
Google Apps Education Edition would offer reliability and six gigabytes of Gmail storage to members of the Georgetown community while preserving the “@georgetown.edu” domain. Google servers would process the e-mails, saving the University money and manpower, and avoiding the crashes that occur when our campus server’s relatively small capacity is overloaded. Google Apps costs businesses $50 per user per year, but for universities, it’s completely free and includes 24/7 tech support for University Information Services.
Launched in October 2006, the suite is used by thousands of educational institutions on six continents, including several major American universities like Arizona State, Northwestern, and Hofstra.
Jenny Lane, who works in Arizona State’s Technology Office, wrote in an e-mail that students have been satisfied with the service, noting that ASU hasn’t even had to take advantage of the tech support Google offers.
Without having to maintain Georgetown’s e-mail servers, UIS would be free to work on other priorities like better wireless Internet access, and students and faculty would no longer be at the mercy of UIS’s planned and unplanned e-mail outages.
“Administrators tell us that all of a sudden they’re on to doing something that adds more value to the institution from an educational perspective,” Jeff Keltner, the Business Development Manager for Google Apps, said.
Besides Gmail, Google Apps also comes with Google Documents. Google Docs has a feature which allows students to simultaneously edit a document, making endless forwarding of group projects obsolete.
It took Arizona State two weeks to transition its 65,000 students to Google Apps. Technical details, it seems, will be no obstacle for Georgetown. All the administration has to do is give Google a call.
