* would be relieved to have people that are more capable handeling it for them*
Google isn't going to send staff out to your school to create/manage the accounts etc. Someone will still need to do that.
* I thought I had heard of filtering options for enterprise/education customers but I can't find the article saying so. Acting on the assumption that it would be filterable, are there any other objections*
For filtering to be of any use, you also need to be able to log who tried to access what - because a lot of the filtering process is checking access logs for undesired sites.
So lets say you can use an authenticated proxy to log that - you then need to have an authentication system for the proxy server. So now you have a list of students, staff, etc in your local LDAP (i.e. AD/eDirectory/etc) and a mirrored list in Google Apps so they can use that. But then you have to explain to the users that the passwords aren't in sync, and that if they want to change their proxy password you have to provide some kind of web interface for them, because they aren't authenticating the device via Directory Services, which provides a password-change/password expired/etc mechanism for desktop OS'.
* But how is new it staff !== external provider*
If you hire IT staff and then tell them they are there to "support" Google Apps/Gmail, if they are any good they will politely tell you to stick your job. If they want to stay, you don't really want them.
>>Google isn't going to send staff out to your school to create/manage the accounts etc. Someone will still need to do that.
They have api's and forms to easily create this. Its must cheaper than rewriting your own system.
>>So lets say you can use an authenticated proxy to log that - you then need to have an authentication system for the proxy server. So now you have a list of students, staff, etc in your local LDAP (i.e. AD/eDirectory/etc) and a mirrored list in Google Apps so they can use that. But then you have to explain to the users that the passwords aren't in sync, and that if they want to change their proxy password you have to provide some kind of web interface for them, because they aren't authenticating the device via Directory Services, which provides a password-change/password expired/etc mechanism for desktop OS'.
I know I asked you to extrapolate on an assumption, but I can't image a chromeos implementation requiring an LDAP server for this sort of work. Simply hardcoding a list of blocked sites and IPs into any non-admins account would be fairly trivial to implement. But yes I agree, if you did this by means of a complicated solution it would be complicated.
>>If you hire IT staff and then tell them they are there to "support" Google Apps/Gmail, if they are any good they will politely tell you to stick your job. If they want to stay, you don't really want them.
The point is the complete reduction/need for a full time IT person. Google also offers 24/7 phone support for all education and corporate subscribers. A "computer guy" and these services would work fine for a majority of people.
Ultimately, is this a silver bullet for all schools? No. But Silver bullets don't exist. This is something that takes a lot of load and setup/maintenance from the schools. And in the end I fail to see how this could be anything but a positive thing.
Comments
* would be relieved to have people that are more capable handeling it for them*
Google isn't going to send staff out to your school to create/manage the accounts etc. Someone will still need to do that.
* I thought I had heard of filtering options for enterprise/education customers but I can't find the article saying so. Acting on the assumption that it would be filterable, are there any other objections* For filtering to be of any use, you also need to be able to log who tried to access what - because a lot of the filtering process is checking access logs for undesired sites.
So lets say you can use an authenticated proxy to log that - you then need to have an authentication system for the proxy server. So now you have a list of students, staff, etc in your local LDAP (i.e. AD/eDirectory/etc) and a mirrored list in Google Apps so they can use that. But then you have to explain to the users that the passwords aren't in sync, and that if they want to change their proxy password you have to provide some kind of web interface for them, because they aren't authenticating the device via Directory Services, which provides a password-change/password expired/etc mechanism for desktop OS'.
* But how is new it staff !== external provider*
If you hire IT staff and then tell them they are there to "support" Google Apps/Gmail, if they are any good they will politely tell you to stick your job. If they want to stay, you don't really want them.
>>Google isn't going to send staff out to your school to create/manage the accounts etc. Someone will still need to do that.
They have api's and forms to easily create this. Its must cheaper than rewriting your own system.
>>So lets say you can use an authenticated proxy to log that - you then need to have an authentication system for the proxy server. So now you have a list of students, staff, etc in your local LDAP (i.e. AD/eDirectory/etc) and a mirrored list in Google Apps so they can use that. But then you have to explain to the users that the passwords aren't in sync, and that if they want to change their proxy password you have to provide some kind of web interface for them, because they aren't authenticating the device via Directory Services, which provides a password-change/password expired/etc mechanism for desktop OS'.
I know I asked you to extrapolate on an assumption, but I can't image a chromeos implementation requiring an LDAP server for this sort of work. Simply hardcoding a list of blocked sites and IPs into any non-admins account would be fairly trivial to implement. But yes I agree, if you did this by means of a complicated solution it would be complicated.
>>If you hire IT staff and then tell them they are there to "support" Google Apps/Gmail, if they are any good they will politely tell you to stick your job. If they want to stay, you don't really want them.
The point is the complete reduction/need for a full time IT person. Google also offers 24/7 phone support for all education and corporate subscribers. A "computer guy" and these services would work fine for a majority of people.
Ultimately, is this a silver bullet for all schools? No. But Silver bullets don't exist. This is something that takes a lot of load and setup/maintenance from the schools. And in the end I fail to see how this could be anything but a positive thing.