Google intends to make student life easier
By Joel Hulsey
What started as a simple search engine in 1996 now is synonymous with the Internet. This giant owns Blogger, YouTube and the email provider that connects Amarillo College faculty, students and staff.
Google, along with MyAccount, has changed the way students and faculty schedule their work.
Amarillo College started using MyAC in 1999, said Chief Information Officer Lee Colaw. “The college did a new contract to renew MyAC for three more years,” Colaw said. “At that time, it appeared very few people were using MyAC.”
The decision to get rid of MyAC came after the college conducted surveys that showed students and faculty were not using it.
“Sometimes, good ideas don’t happen,” Colaw said. Only 9 percent to 13 percent of students were using MyAC.
“We looked at either the Hotmail solution or the Google solution,” Colaw said. “Google is by far the No. 1 in the world. We’re the first school in the entire Panhandle of Texas to go Google. It just felt like the right decision.”
“MyAccount has updated my life,” said David Byrd, a respiratory care major. “It has kept me in sync consistently with my classes.”
Gmail is accessible from MyAccount. It carries 7GB of storage, something no other email service currently provides.
Included in a Gmail account is Google Voice, located at the bottom of the account, which for the remainder of 2011 lets you call any phone number free.
Voice is helpful for those who might be having phone troubles.
For the student on the go without a word processor, there is Google Docs. An Internet connection and a keyboard are all that are needed. Docs has a group feature that allows anyone from anywhere in a specified group to edit one document.
MyAccount began for AC students in November 2010. Almost a year later, nothing but positive feedback can be heard campuswide.
For more information about Google, MyAC or other AC computer or Internet questions, call the information technology department at 371-5000.
Originally published: Friday, September 9, 2011
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