Comments on Unimpressed: Google EDU Apps Marketplace

• The Apps Marketplace has focused to date on SMB apps
• Posted by Scott McMullan , Google Apps Partner Lead at Google on January 12, 2011 at 4:16am EST
• The only thing you're missing is that to date, the Google Apps Marketplace has focused on software for SMBs, not EDUs.
  
  EDU-focused apps beyond Grockit include PlanbookEdu and EasyBib, but you're absolutely right -- we don't yet have a rich selection.

• low hanging fruit
• Posted by Lydia Arledge , Consultant on January 12, 2011 at 5:45am EST
• This is the question I am asked about most frequently by faculty that I work with. How long will it take? The market is ripe right now.

• Bb Behemoth
• Posted by K Klein , Assoc. Prof./Computer Studies at Onondaga Community College on January 12, 2011 at 7:30am EST
• Now that Bb has digested much of the competition (WebCT/Angel), and tried to mash them all together into a nearly unusable mess (supporting legacy environments is the problem, I suspect), I agree that there is a golden opportunity for Google to make inroads in the LMS arena.
  
  One additional factor relating to this opportunity is that many, many faculty are completely disgusted with "official" IT support on campuses. We have to suffer with IT "technocrats" who are dismissive of us and what we are attempting to accomplish in our classrooms - especially something new. This is a broad brush tarring a lot of good supportive IT campuses (UW-Madison is one example I have experience with - they were fantastic even to a lowly graduate student when I was there in the late 90's), but my experience lately has been that many campus IT departments are now risk averse and almost "faculty hostile."
  
  Those of us trying to do something different are viewed as potentially disrupting a finely-tuned campus infrastructure. Any changes are particularly difficult now in tight economic times.
  
  My money is on some entrepreneur taking Moodle and using this platform in some way to let me do an end run around local roadblocks. If I could see how this could be done, I would do it, but as of right now, I don't see how. I am looking forward to it happening though.
  
  Given Google's mistakes of late (dropping h.264 support in Chrome, for example), I don't think it will be them.
  
  

• What would teachers/universities like to see?
• Posted by Taylor Gould at Cloud Sherpas on January 12, 2011 at 9:00am EST
• We're a Google Apps authorized reseller (#1 in the US), and we produce an in-house admin product called SherpaTools, it's the #1 admin tool in the Google Apps Marketplace.
  
  I agree that the market for EDU apps is ripe. There's nothing in the marketplace.
  
  Teachers out there and other university users - what would you want to see? I would love to know the top 4-5 requests of this user group.
  
  I see it as a great opportunity for us to help a group of people with unmatched influence on our country's future.

• Posted by Steve Foerster , an adjunct IT instructor at a Midwestern community college on January 12, 2011 at 9:30am EST
• Prof. Klein,
  
  If you search for "free Moodle hosting" you'll find a number of options. You may also be interested in Schoology, which has a goofy name but an interesting looking LMS with a free level of service: https://www.schoology.com/
  
  Personally, I'd love it if Google were to come out with an LMS of their own, that integrates with what they already offer with Google Apps for Education. And it would give them something to do with all that code they developed for Wave....

• Marketing to faculty... really????
• Posted by Laura Gibbs , Online Instructor at University of Oklahoma on January 13, 2011 at 10:30am EST
• The market is ripe??? I don't think so. University faculty are incredibly resistant to change when it comes to technology use, especially when it comes to technology they use for teaching. You can hardly blame Google for the fact that developers and vendors are not thrilled about such a market. We use Desire2Learn at my school, which gets clunkier and clunkier, more and more visibly outdated from year to year, but hardly any of the faculty complain (even if the students find it more and more painful compared to the online environment they are used to using). The only time faculty will complain is when we try to CHANGE from Desire2Learn to something else. I am sure the faculty would be happy to keep using Desire2Learn until they retire. They are busy doing research, going to conferences and engaging in activities that get them rewards and recognition professionally. As long as teaching is undervalued compared to those other professional activities, the market for educational technology among the faculty themselves is pretty grim. Most of the tools I use in my online teaching were not developed for online education; I've just hijacked them for my own purposes, benefiting from the strong market in productivity tools in the business world.