The Wikiness

I blogged earlier this year about the big roll-out of  GAFE (Google Apps for Education) in lots of K-12 public districts this fall, and the rumbles I was hearing about its buggy instabilities. I theorized that such instabilities would not work well among school children.

 Well it’s the teachers, not the students, who have to be happy with GAFE first. And it is they who are complaining loudest so far.

Things like random inconsistencies between browsers accessing GAFE, randomly changing permissions, format changes between uploads and downloads relevant to different versions of Word–all relatively minor stuff–is making teachers hesitant to cleave unto the new suite of apps (which is what GAFE really is), and hold tighter to the old Microsoft Office, with all of its own shortcomings.

Dealing with the teacher blow-back, IT administrators are reporting that GAFE is going to be a hard sell–frustrated teachers will not, nor should, be silent.  Word to Google engineers–get GAFE un-goofy or schools won’t be getting on board.