Pawa IT goes to the International School of Lusaka: Zambia
Pawa IT has gone international! Is the first thing I am going to say. For you our avid readers, sorry we have not posted in a while but we are back.
In a bid to reach out to more schools in Africa, Pawa IT made its way to Zambia. The 7th and 8th of November marked the dates the company set out to increase the footprint of Google Apps in Africa. This is how the training went down.
The first Day: 7th Nov 2014.
This was the first day of training where the focus was mainly on the core Google Applications:
- Gmail
- Calendar
- Sites
- Drive
- Groups
- Hangouts
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Our Programs/ Projects Manager: The benefits of Google Apps[/caption]
Due to public demand, we went further and threw in some classroom lessons.
We were training teachers/ educators from different institutions (a total of 20 schools) with each school getting a representative for the training session.
The main objective of this training was to introduce the schools present to Google apps, talk about the importance of switching to Google apps and encourage them to sign up for the same. Therefore, it involved going to the basics including a walk through on how to sign up for Google apps.
We understand trying out something new can be daunting at first and that is why we are there to walk you through every step of the way.
We had two training sessions, a morning session and an afternoon session. The morning session entailed all the introductory components including making it clear to the schools available that Google apps for education is completely free of charge for all learning institutions all over the world. We had to quell a few fears and also deal with the few misconceptions about Google Apps. For instance, we had a teacher who was unsure about Google’s security, according to him, Google cannot guarantee protection from computer viruses.
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What are Google Apps?[/caption]
To answer his question, Google Apps is completely secure, all of the applications are available online (you don’t have to install any applications on your computer) and they all communicate to Google’s servers with the latest encryption technologies. Google has a team of highly experienced and dedicated security engineers whose sole purpose is to ensure the security of its servers. Moreover, any file that you upload into your Google Drive is scanned as it is uploaded to Google’s servers. Not to mention, with two step authentication in place, it is impossible for a hacker to take over your account. Have you ever tried to send a .exe file over Google’s servers? Well, if you have tried, you know that is is not possible. To put it bluntly, the possibility of you getting a computer virus while using Google’s services is next to nil.
During the training, we answered a lot of questions and settled the concerns raised about the use of Google apps. It was evident that the session had been successful mostly due to the high level of participation and the excitement in the room.
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After the First Session[/caption]
The Second Day:8th Nov 2014
The focus of the second day of training was the technical side of Google Apps. We sat down with the IT gurus of the respective schools to walk them through the sign up process for Google Apps, what to to, and what not to do.
Initially, we had assumed that everyone would be familiar with Google Apps for education, however, after a few minutes of training, we realized that some of the people present were not very comfortable. We resorted to taking everyone present through the importance of Google Apps, what Google Apps is, and basic usage e.g. creating labels and filters in gmail.
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IT staff during the Technical Session[/caption]
The technical session was not as long as the first day session. This is mainly because the Google apps manager cpanel has fewer content compared to the actual applications in use
In summary, we taught the IT staff how to:
- How to sign up for Google apps
- How to create and manage users
- How to create and add users to organizations
- How to turn on/off services for specific organizations
- How to create and manage groups
- Extras:
- How to filter incoming/outgoing mail for sensitive information
- How to back up and restore users files
- Setting up dual delivery-Primary:Google
- How to view user activity using the reports
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The ICT staff and trainers after the second day[/caption]
By the time we were done with the training session, everyone was interested in signing up for Google Apps as soon as possible. Most of those present in the session had already started the process.
If you would also like our help, feel free to contact us via email:pawait@pawait.co.ke any day, any time. It doesnt matter what country you are in, we are ready to help
