Got the "App"titude?
Got the "App"titude is a challenge looking for student, faculty, and alumni leaders across India to implement Google Apps within their colleges. Google Apps Education Edition is a free suite of online products that offers students and faculty the tools to share information and ideas more easily.
Does your college need...
- Email with less spam, 6.9 GB of storage and virus protection?
- Instant messaging and calls for free, anytime, anywhere in the world?
- Shareable calendars to easily organize events and meetings?
- Online documents to make group projects easier to complete?
The Challenge
What is the Got the "App"titude Challenge?
Got the "App"titude is about improving your college's communication and collaboration capabilities using Google Apps. Students, faculty and alumni are encouraged to team up to represent their colleges in the following tasks:
- Sign up for the challenge by September 22, 2008. (Registration is now closed)
- Get approval from your college's administration to implement Google Apps by November 21, 2008.
- Work with your IT department to implement Google Apps by January 31, 2009.
- Achieve the highest level of Google Apps usage amongst all participating colleges by February 28, 2009 to be declared the challenge winner!
Who's eligible?
Got the "App"titude is open to all Engineering and MBA colleges in India that are not already signed up for Google Apps.
How do I make a team for my college?
After registration closes, we will gather all interested participants and group them by college. Only 1 team per college is allowed and each team must include at least 1 faculty member. Recommended team size is around 5; however, the team may enlist the help of others at the college as needed throughout the process. In addition, we will assign 1 Googler to each team to help answer questions and guide the team through the challenge.
How do you win?
Winning is based on 2 factors -- successful implementation of Google Apps and the highest level of Google Apps usage amongst all the participating colleges. Also, a bonus prize will go to the team that utilizes Apps in the most creative way.
The Prizes!
Prizes will be awarded to teams in 2 categories:
1) Teams that successfully implement Google Apps by January 31, 2009 will receive:
- A Certificate of Implementation
- Publication of your team's name and member names on this website
2) For the team that deployed Google Apps by January 31, 2009 and also achieved the highest level of Google Apps usage at their college will receive:
- A case study to be featured on our Google Apps website as well as a video testimonial featured on our Google Apps YouTube channel
- A letter of recommendation from FMS and Google
- An all expense paid trip for your team to visit one of our Google India offices
Bonus Prize!
The team that illustrates the most creative use of Apps will also win a bonus prize. Only teams that have implemented Google Apps by the January 31, 2009 deadline are eligible to win.
Why Google Apps?
Google Apps brings together essential services to help your college communicate and collaborate more effectively. Google Apps Education Edition is:
- 6.9 GB of email (and growing) with spam and virus protection
- Email, calendar, and collaboration tools right from the browser
- Free with no advertising for students, faculty and staff
- Easy to manage with no hardware or software to maintain
- Supported 24x7 for administrators
- Ready to integrate with many APIs and use of Open Standards
Thousands of schools around the world are already using Google Apps. Here's what a few had to say:
Faculty of Management Studies -- New Delhi, India
Until Google Apps, we had been maintaining our own mail server that provided 2 MB email accounts to our campus community. With the amount of spam that was making it through our filters, our small inboxes were being choked on a daily basis. With Google, the spam filtering works much better and with 1,000 times as much storage per account, we do not have to worry about full inboxes anymore. The Admissions Director and the Dean are especially pleased with the improvement since they get a high volume of mail per day. Setup was simple and being able to use our school logo conveys the message that this is truly a campus mail system, not just another email account.
Ankush Trakru, Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University
Read the FMS case study to learn more.
Northwestern University -- Chicago, Illinois USA
Our students approached us about a year ago, saying that we needed to improve our email and collaboration services. We actually had our student government tell us, 'we want you to implement Google Apps'. Higher education institutions have the opportunity right now to focus on their core competencies of education and of supporting true education. If other peripheral services - communication services - are being done by someone else in a best-of-breed fashion, why not take advantage?
Wendy Woodward, Director of Technology Support Services, Northwestern University
How do you get your college to use Google Apps?
You're convinced that Google Apps is the solution for your college, but how do you win the support of key decision makers? Start by reviewing this module so you can learn all about Google Apps. Then, use this presentation at meetings with administrators, students, and faculty to help them better understand the benefits of Google Apps.
To learn more about Google Apps, watch this comprehensive module, or checkout the Google Apps:
FAQ
If you have questions about the Challenge or Google Apps, check out the Got the "App"titude Challenge Help Center. Here you'll find FAQs on:
- About Google Apps
- Setting up and using Google Apps
- Details on the Challenge
If you have additional questions about the Got the "App"titude Challenge, ask your team's assigned Googler or contact us at admin@gottheapptitude.com.
For Google Apps product related questions, checkout the Challenge Help Center, the Google Apps user-to-user forum, Google Apps Help Center, or your team's assigned Googler. If you still can't find an answer to your Google Apps question, contact our support team through this web form.
Student Testimonials
IIT Delhi, Department of Management Studies
"When we heard about this challenge, the initial step to implement Apps in IITD was to purchase a domain name. This process took about 5-7 days. Then we customized Apps to satisfy the needs of our department by configuring/testing Sites, Docs, Email, Start Page etc., in about 10 days' time. The next 30 odd days were devoted to create awareness and share product knowledge with the other stakeholders like the faculty/full time and part time students. During this time, we created user accounts for students and faculty members in the Apps account, and helped them get familiar with the product's functionality. After implementing Apps in DMS, we now are in process of talking to the key stakeholders in all the other departments in IIT Delhi to implement campus-wide.
The Placement Committee and the Industrial Interaction Committee at DMS, IIT Delhi has a charter of organizing events and inviting people from the industry to deliberate on various topics of relevance in the field of management. Before Google apps implementation, the committees did not have any record of events that were organized over the years and there was no central repository to store the event details. With Apps implemented at DMS, the Industrial Interaction Committee now maintains a sites of their own where they track and update all the event details for future reference. This has indeed made life easier for the committees and all students and acts as a ready reckoner for the company and speaker names and bios sketches for any future reference. The Google apps team at IIT-D is pushing the other committees to follow suit and start using Google Sites extensively to preserve and pass on relevant data across batches coming into DMS over the subsequent years.
Its amazing to see how Apps has benefited me and my colleagues in our daily academic and non academic activities. Its full of features and yet so simple with the ever so user friendly interface. Be it Calendars, Docs, Sites, Video, Gmail, G talk......you name it and Apps has it for you, the way you want and that too in the most secure way possible!"
- IITD Team: Sai Jayanth, Samarth Sharma, Kshitij Aggarwal, Biraja Deo and Avijeet Singh
XLRI Transforming with XL Connect
"Google's 'Got the Apptitude' challenge has given us the opportunity to transform our communication system. After registration, the first thing we did was to implement Google Apps in our existing test server. We named this initiative 'XL CONNECT' because the services provided by Google Apps will help the XL community stay connected 24/7. We then came up with a working model to increase Google Apps awareness and market its advantages in campus. The presentation created by Google came in handy to explain the benefits from Google Apps to our faculty members, IT admin and student committees. Since Email was a default application we focused on the other Google Apps products like Talk, Sites and Docs. Our main selling point was Google sites which would be very helpful for our student committees. As every committee wanted a group site, it was easy to make the sale and obtain approval from our IT admin. The contest deadlines really pushed us to stay focused. We are excited about the launch and we have already started increasing Apps awareness through teasers, posters and some merchandise. We also plan to create some use cases on how effectively Google apps can be used."
- XLRI Team Members: Hariharan R, Chintan Agarwal, Amrit Pal Singh, Srikanth Thunga, Prof. Ashish Pani
Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore
"With overflowing mail boxes and the need to transfer tons of information through email, what else could a student ask for but ‘Google Apps’ ? Being a final year student, I know the turmoil faced by students while coordinating with their project guides and team members to complete their project on time. Google Apps has made a big difference in the education community with its easy document sharing, calendar sharing and free calling facility. In addition to making it easier for students to collaborate within the college, Apps has also made it possible for us to work with student work groups anywhere in the world through instant messaging service. This has resulted in a conglomeration of views which is essential to develop solutions to complex engineering problems. Calendar sharing has made it easy for us to set up daily schedules with our project guides and other faculty members. Apart from the huge virus-protected mail box facility, the Google Talk facility offered by Google Apps is the most coveted one as it is truly most useful for making instant calls and transferring files. In short, Google Apps has made communication and collaboration on-campus a cake walk."
- Kumaraguru College of Technology Team Members: V. Vijilesh, V.B. Bala Kaarthik, Prabhu Karthikeyan, Kousik, Pavithra G, Prof. D. Lakshmanan
Padmasri Dr.B.V. Raju Institute of Technology, Narsarpur
"We, the student team in Padmasri Dr.B.V.Raju Institute of Technology, Narsarpur, Andhra Pradesh, participating in 'Got The Apptitude Challenge' have obtained approval from the college decision makers and are in the process of implementing Google Apps in our college. Below is a brief summary of the initiatives we have taken:
After we registered for the challenge and formed the final team (Team 'Xtreme Techies'), we started creating a student database. We then approached the decision makers, informed them of Google Apps, answered their concerns... and were able to obtain their ok to use Google Apps in our college. We've now implemented Apps in our test server, and are in the process of providing email accounts to all students and faculty members of the college. Going forward, we're planning to concentrate more on Google Docs and Google Sites which we believe would be very useful for our students in publicizing various college fests and events. We're planning to increase Google Apps awareness in the college by displaying posters, banners, and distributing some merchandise. In addition, we're planning to conduct some competitions to encourage our students to use Google Apps effectively. We're sure that Google Apps would completely change the way we function as an educational institution."
- Padmasri Dr.B.V. Raju Institute of Technology Team Members: Karthik Reddy, J. Chakradhar Rao, Yugendra Venkata Durgamruth Kumar Sala, Madhu B Babu, M Ramchand C, Damoder Reddy
Until Google Apps, we had been maintaining our own mail server that provided 2 MB email accounts to our campus community. With the amount of spam that was making it through our filters, our small inboxes were being choked on a daily basis. With Google, the spam filtering works much better and with 1,000 times as much storage per account, we do not have to worry about full inboxes anymore. The Admissions Director and the Dean are especially pleased with the improvement since they get a high volume of mail per day. Setup was simple and being able to use our school logo conveys the message that this is truly a campus mail system, not just another email account.