From Darkness to Light-The Nakuru College Success Story with Google Apps
What are the basic requirements for a successful learning institution? I asked around for an answer to this question from different stakeholders in the education sector, and they all agreed that the following were the essentials; (The order of appearance does not signify the level of importance)
- Modern and well maintained learning infrastructure.
- Enough learning materials
- A good ratio of educators to learners (at least 1:30)
- Good communication (Both internal and External)
A peek at most upcoming institutions reveals that a good number lack in one major aspect mentioned above, communication.
Imagine how difficult it would be to communicate in this century without the internet, or an email address, or social media. I like comparing those days before the invention of Google to the dark ages, the days when information was a reserve for the few. The only way to access information back then was to go through volumes of books in search of some little information. Nowadays, all you have to do is type that question in Google and you get links to millions of search results, your job is to filter them to remain with the most relevant.
Back to the issue of communication, how do modern learning institutions communicate with their clients? Or prospective students? You guessed right, through an online presence, and that’s where we as PawaIT come into play.
To illustrate my point, I am going to give you the story of a college in Nakuru, Nakuru College of Health Sciences and Management. A month ago, NCHSM was virtually invisible. A Google search for the institution would direct you to a Facebook page with a three month old post and a few likes. The only way to reach the institution was through either a phone call or a yahoo email account. The major problem with this is that there was no direct way to get their contact information. In fact, the only way was through someone who knew someone at the institution. However, a visit to the establishment revealed that NCHSM had very good infrastructure for learning, recently completed classrooms, state of the art laboratories and quad core state of the art computers. Unfortunately, they had no way of sharing this with the world, or leveraging the full power of their quad core machines.
Luckily for NCHSM, they knew people who know people and through that network, they gave us a call. And so like the missionaries setting out sail, we set out to spread the gospel of Google apps for education and its numerous advantages to learning institutions.
Our work was set for us, first we acquired a domain for them, developed a website, signed up for Google apps, setup mail flow, integrated some core services with their website, and even went ahead to do some more integration for them, you know simple things like an email retrieval portal(wink wink). If you are wondering how long all that took, well it was only 4 days (Yeah that’s how good we are as PawaIT). We went ahead to upgrade them to their domain specific, Google hosted emails. What this means is, we did away with their @yahoo.com accounts and gave them new, fresh, secure, fast, free and official @nchsm.ac.ke emails (If that’s not impressive I don’t know what is :). We didn’t stop there, we went even further and showed them the power of collaboration with Google drive, showed them how easy it was to plan school timetables with Google calendar, showed them how to video conference using hangouts, how to create websites using Google sites…..There are so many advantages to using Google apps for learning institutions that I will not be able to mention all of them here, that will require a totally different post.
Currently, a web search for Nakuru College of Health Sciences and Management will lead you to their brand new, simple, intuitive and colourful website. From there, you can get their official contact details, read a few staff portfolios, hear from the principal, see some pictures of the wonderful institution, apply for a course (directly from the website), and even leave a comment for them without any hassles. Initially, to achieve such a feat, one would have to scurry for the contact details, ask around for the location, write a letter, post it, wait for a response that may never come, simply because of some breakdown in communication along the way.
To sum it up, if you know of an institution like Nakuru College of Health and Sciences and management, do them a favour and point them in our direction. We guarantee to take them to the next level of operation. We have the best trainers, best developers and most efficient team to deploy, integrate and train for Google apps as well as a team of creative minds to develop amazing content for all your website needs. We take institutions from the dark age, and show them a world of limitless possibilities. Did I mention that Google apps for education is totally free for learning institutions? The only expense incurred by institutions deploying Google apps is domain acquisition and website development, if they are not available.
Still not convinced? Send us an email to pawait@pawait.co.ke and we will show you why you need to work with us.
