Special Olympics Ontario has gone Google!

Special Olympics Ontario would like to express its appreciation to Google for accepting us into their non-profit program for Google Apps. As a result of this partnership our communities have free access to a full range of web site development resources, email,calendering, photo, video and social media tools that are part of the Google Apps Suite.

Communities and clubs looking to create a web presence, obtain email addresses for their clubs, create a web site or share information will now have access to powerful tools to accomplish these tasks quickly, easily and with minimum effort.

This site will serve to support users new to Google Apps at Special Olympics Ontario and provide access to resources for existing users looking for support and information about Google Apps.

Special Olympics Ontario Google Apps are free to registered programs and users within Special Olympics Ontario. If you are interested in a user account please contact your District Developer for more information.

If you already have a Google Apps account and have received a welcome letter with login information you can login and begin using Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites and other apps, right away.

What is Google Apps?

Google Apps is a suite of web-based messaging and collaboration applications that Google hosts on their own servers. Google provides these applications as a "service," rather than as software to download and install. To access these applications, you simply use a web browser on a computer that's connected to the Internet.

Why did you choose Google Apps?

Based on recent Special Olympics Ontario growth trends as well as a needs assessment of our communities, we looked for an email, calendar, site creation and document sharing solution that could provide with us the following benefits:

• Lower infrastructure costs -- All your email will be stored securely on Google's servers, so we'll no longer need to maintain email servers on-site
• Ability to consolidate our platforms -- We can eliminate redundancy by moving all of our email and calendar platforms to Google Apps
• Lower support costs -- Because Google hosts the email and calendar services, there's no more email client software to maintain on your computer
• Innovative solutions -- We can leverage the ongoing creative and technical solutions of the Google Apps platform to provide employees with powerful, easy-to-use tools for getting their work done
• Highly scalable environment -- With Google Apps, our email capacity will grow automatically as our Special Olympics Ontario community grows, and we'll avoid the complexity of internal systems
• Access to services from anywhere, anytime -- A key benefit of the Google-hosted solution is that we can access email, contacts, and calendar from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection, anywhere in the world
• More collaboration features -- With Google's next-generation applications, we can collaborate with colleagues, customers, and partners more easily and efficiently than ever before
• Instant messaging -- Because Google Apps includes Google Talk, we can now implement an instant messaging system for Special Olympics Ontario

What exactly does Google Apps include?

Your new Google Apps account will include the following services:

What are the key benefits?

• Lots of storage -- You get a full 25 GB of online storage for your email (much more than the 5GB for those of you on our old server), so you can archive all of your email online. You'll no longer need to worry about deleting messages or saving them in offline folders.
• Enhanced message organization and retrieval -- With Google Mail, you'll spend less time managing folders and searching for messages. For example, you can add one or more tags, or "labels," to your messages to organize and store them more efficiently. And with the Google-powered search feature, you can find any message quickly and easily, whether it's in your Inbox or stored in your message archive.
• Easier calendar sharing -- Google Calendar lets you and your team members quickly and easily share your calendars with each other and specify the details you want to show. Calendar sharing is a great way for you and your coworkers to keep each other informed about your schedules. Now it's easier than ever to find out if someone is in a meeting, on a business trip, or on vacation.
• Integrated chat -- With the Google Talk instant messaging application, you can communicate instantly with your coworkers right from the Email interface. In addition, all your chats are automatically saved in your Email application, so you can always retrieve important information.
• Real-time collaboration -- Using Google Docs, you can create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and you and your team members can view and edit them at the same time. You can still use your personal email products as needed, but now you'll have more options for storing and collaborating on your documents.
• Easy-to-build team web sites -- With Google Sites, your team has the ability to quickly publish a robust internal web site on which to gather all sorts of shared information, such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, files, and videos. You can even embed Google calendars and other gadgets on your site!
• Powerful video sharing -- Using YouTube which is a connected Google Product, you can easily share videos with your team or throughout Special Olympics Ontario for a whole new level of communication and collaboration.