I know UC Davis has done the switch as well: http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=10587
Alex is right in that institutions (especially Universities) should be critical of their own networks and email systems. However, this does not mean Google is the best, or even necessarily a better option. In fact, my argument is that University systems are better merely because they are homegrown. All aspects of a University have the potential to become zones of learning. Education does not take place in classrooms alone. Perhaps administrations see running networks and, specifically, email service as a financial and logistical burden, given that companies like Google can provide similar services for much cheaper. However, what opportunity does this leave for faculty, researchers, and students to change the system or use it in such a way that facilitates their learning? An example at Berkeley is the Open Computing Facility (OCF, http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu). It is an entirely student-run group that provides FREE hosting and email for many student groups, individual students/teachers/researchers, and even academic departments who are short on funding! It does not make sense to me for a University to employ Google when more support could be given to the members of the institution itself--specifically to students--and effectively kill two birds with one stone: education AND email. > Adi Kamdar wrote: >> Hey folks, >> >> The Yale Daily News ran an article today about how there's >> almost-definite talk about Yale switching to Google Apps for Education >> and using Google servers/software to host our email. >> >> http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2010/02/09/google-run-yale-e-mail/ >> >> I was wondering if you guys had any thoughts or good literature on the >> issues with this (re privacy, data, costs, security, tech, law, etc.). >> For the most part, the students are overjoyed about this since our old >> email system is painful to use, so it'd be nice to address usability >> issues as well. > > This was also under discussion at UF when I was there, and is a hot > topic among the higher ed IT crowd in general. There were similar > dynamics to the discussion: a lot of students familiar with Gmail > interface and unhappy with the occasional issues of the local service. > > Background reading: > http://www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/Cloud%20Computing/27148 > http://autonomo.us/ > > As others on the list have expressed, it's hard to draw an unambiguous > conclusion about this development. I do think it's worthwhile for > students to articulate their free culture concerns in this area, though. > Regardless of who hosts it, students' email should have strong privacy > protection, should be managed by free software, should follow open > standards, and should be accessible regardless of disability. > > -- > Gavin Baker > http://www.gavinbaker.com/ > [email protected] > > It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. > Yogi Berra (attributed) > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
