A couple of days ago I blogged about David White's survey of Web 2.0 use in universities. At the time I raised the questions about what this means for webmail use and google apps use in universities. Well I mailed David to ask his views and here's his reply:
From: David White Subject: RE: Some real data on Web 2.0 use To: Doug Moncur
Yes, I didn't ask about web mail but it is a good point. I don't have any data to support this but I think that you are right, a lot of people are moving away from the desktop in general because of the ease of accessibility (especially as work, study, and socialising become blended online). Mail is just another one of those services that students find easier to use in the browsers. It also helps that they can collect mail on admin 'locked-down' machines. I think the Google apps question will come down to things like IP and service level agreements in relation to educational institutions. A lot of students will begin to use the service especially those who don't think about (or care) where their data is or who 'own it' as long as it's easy to use. I could imagine a situation in which a lot of students take up the service while institutions thrash around trying to come to an 'official' arrangement. Dave _____ From: Doug Moncur Sent: 19 March 2007 23:34 To: David White Subject: Re: Some real data on Web 2.0 use Hi, Thanks for publicising your interesting survey. It's always gratifying to see data that supports one's gut feel about what is going on. I have one supplementary question (well actually two). Given the high degree of use of web based calendaring products does this imply that students are also using various webmail services in preference to the service provided by their university? {we've noticed an increase in students preferring to use our web mail service in preference to classic thick clients such as outlook and thunderbird, we also allow students to redirect their campus mail to an external account but the procedure to do so is sufficiently obscure to mean that few do} And my extra question is, what does this mean for Google apps for Education?
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Interesting the way that email, web, search etc just become services and no longer someting special.
Perhaps this is really what the pervasive computing, always on environment is ...
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