Don't Google without Gaggle: Gaggle's Integration of Google's Apps for Education

The word “gaggle” is most often used to describe a large group of geese; however, the student e-mail provider Gaggle may be giving the word a new household definition upon its recent collaboration with Google (News - Alert).

Individually, the two sites each provide related services to their school-aged clientele. Gaggle was engineered in 1999 to be a safe e-mail provider for K-12 students. Since then, the site has taken off and become a leader in safe student technology, providing communication services like e-mail, calendars, assignment drop boxes and filtered YouTube (News - Alert) access. Google Apps for Education, similarly, combines the Google features of Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sites (easy-to-build webpages that don’t require coding) and Vault (a specialized archiving tool) in a setting that is secure and with high storage capacity.

The integration of Gaggle and Google Apps for Education has allowed Gaggle to combine its proven safety features with Google’s established productivity services. Gaggle fills in the gaps of Google Apps for Education, making it even more secure and applicable for the K-12 student set; with more learning features, easier and more organized management of user accounts, and the new option of full integration with Google’s Chromebook, the union is beneficial to students, parents, and faculty across the board.

Jeff Patterson, Gaggle founder and CEO, said in a statement, “Gaggle is known for being responsive to the evolving needs of our customers, and this integration is one more example of melding our extensive safety features with tools educators want.”

As Kipp Bently, executive director of interdisciplinary learning at Denver Public Schools, stated, “Don’t Google without Gaggle!” And so it will become, as Gaggle becomes even more streamlined and secure for students with the help of Google’s top-notch services. “Gaggle” may not just mean a herd of geese anymore, but it well may be that this new integration gets a gaggle of supporters.