This message is on behalf of Brian Irwin, Head of Technology Enhanced Learning, and Nigel Williamson, Head of IT Support

We are pleased to announce that staff can now access the online applications provided by Google using their institutional login. Students have been able to access these tools for the past two years alongside their university email.

The Google Apps suite is a range of online collaborative tools which can be used to work together on documents, spreadsheets and presentations; make surveys and sign-up sheets quickly; create a webpage or portfolio without any coding experience; and more. Each of the tools have sharing options which allow you to share files or data (such as a document, calendar, website) with other individuals or across the whole institution.

You can also use your University login to access YouTube and Blogger via the Google Apps interface, so you don’t need to create a separate login.

You can access Google Apps directly at http://go.shu.ac.uk/google and shortly there will be a link in the staff intranet and shuspace.

Google Apps includes Google Drive, a cloud storage service which stores files remotely on the internet so they can be accessible by any internet connected device. The University has issued a policy on the use of such services, including the types of materials that should not be shared in such a system.

To support you with the use of these tools, we’ve created a frequently asked questions guide and pulled together some examples of how staff are already using Google Apps for teaching purposes.

We hope you will find these tools a useful addition to support your teaching approaches, and we are currently working on integrating them with Blackboard sites.