DepEd employees nationwide move to Google Apps for Education
The Department of Education (DepEd) today announced that it has leapt into the cloud and moved the department on to utilize Google Apps for Education. Over 600,000 teachers, staff and administrators across the archipelago will soon be able to connect to a common electronic mail (e-mail), chat and calendar system (Gmail, Google Talk and Google Calendar), as well as cloud collaboration tools (Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Groups) to help them communicate more easily and efficiently.
“DepEd is an incredibly large and complex organization. With 200 divisions and 45,000 schools in more than 7,000 islands, we were looking for a way to streamline communications in order to draw the organization closer together,” said DepEd Assistant Secretary Reynaldo Laguda. “Engaging an E-mail or web-mail service will address many of these communication and collaboration challenges. With this collaboration with Google, we will significantly reduce our IT costs,” he continued.
From editing reports, to sharing teaching materials, Google Apps will allow DepEd employees, no matter how remote, to connect and collaborate in real time.
“Google is delighted to be supporting DepEd harness the power of the web to work more efficiently and collaboratively. Providing access to information and education is central to what we do, so it’s very exciting to see this happening at scale in the Philippines with this national project,” said Samuel Cheung, Google Apps Supporting Program Regional Manager for South East Asia, Google.
With 29 million Filipinos already online—many using shared or mobile devices—this 21st century approach to education was a natural choice for DepEd.
Launched by Secretary of Education Armin A. Luistro, the program will allow DepEd to join over 16 million teachers and students around the world who are already using Google Apps for Education.
