100 African schools get G Suite for Education
Opennetworks facilitates implementation for disadvantaged schools in SA
November, 19, 2020, Johannesburg – With COVID-19 driving the necessity for, and adoption of, remote learning for more than 300 million learners across the continent, the Google for Education team recently funded G Suite for Education set-ups for over 100 African schools. Although license packages are free, there is a strong need for private sector partners to work together to implement tools, in line with global best practice.
“Many schools also need adequate support to ensure that the transition from traditional education delivery to an online or blended system is as seamless as possible,” says Grant Lewis, Solutions & Strategic Partnership Lead at Opennetworks.
G Suite for Education benefits include enhanced collaboration with Google Meet, connecting students and teachers, allowing them to teach and learn from anywhere; real time editing of documents through Google Docs and Sheets; and safe and secure storage on Google Drive. Educators are also able to efficiently organise and create coursework through Classrooms and Assignments, while Google Forms make permission slips and quizzes a breeze.
According to Lewis, a typical G Suite for Education set-up takes place over three to six weeks. However, 32 South African schools required implementation to be completed in seven weeks, with 29 receiving sponsorship from Google and three from Opennetworks.
“If you look at the numbers, we provided 24 885 students with access to G Suite accounts as well as 1 591 teachers,” says Lewis. “This equated to 640 hours of work by 17 Opennetworks’ team members and three contractors, including R 100 000 worth of onsite and virtual training to ensure that schools and teachers had a strong understanding of the various platforms.”
“If you look at the numbers, we provided 24 885 students with access to G Suite accounts as well as 1 591 teachers,” says Lewis. “This equated to 640 hours of work by 17 Opennetworks’ team members and three contractors, including R 100 000 worth of onsite and virtual training to ensure that schools and teachers had a strong understanding of the various platforms.”
Overall, G Suite for Education was deployed for over 40 000 students and 3 000 teachers across schools in Africa.
Adds, Farzana Khubchandani, Country Marketing Manager, Google Kenya, “Ultimately, effective collaboration and commitment from all partners ensured that this fast moving and ambitious project succeeded. We are excited about what more we can do to scale impact across the region; helping to empower both learners and educators alike.”
To learn more about the Grow with Google initiative and what beneficiaries have to say, watch our deployment video here: https://bit.ly/2IiXS6h
For a full list of schools, click here.
About Opennetworks
Opennetworks is Africa’s leading Google Premier Partner. Opennetworks holds the only Professional Development specialisation on the African continent and is one of only 50 Google for Education Partners globally to hold the specialisation. Opennetworks specialises in customer implementation and change management for the Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform solutions.
Opennetwork’s vision is to make cutting edge collaboration technology accessible to business and education, connecting people, empowering creativity and innovation, reshaping the markets we operate in and enabling our customers to be resilient and successful.
The Opennetworks team is highly skilled, comprising Google certified cloud engineers, collaboration engineers, deployment specialists, education specialists and trainers. Opennetworks delivers the most comprehensive offering of cloud-enablement for workplace productivity, security, data migration, business intelligence and professional development. The business also has a full technical account management capability supporting customers in their daily operations to always be connected.
