(last updated on 12/6/11)

Dwight-Englewood School has partnered with Google to bring a customized suite of programs to all D-E students, faculty and staff. The suite includes email, calendar, docs (word processing, spreadsheets and presentations), blogs, and more. These applications, collectively called Google Apps, are available from any Internet connected computer on-campus or off-campus by using only a web browser. (The Computer Services department recommends Mozilla Firefox, but most browsers should work.)

This page (http://help.d-e.org/Google-Apps) is your starting place for using D-E's special edition of Google Apps.  Information to help you make use of these tools will continue to be added to this page and pages linked from here so you may wish to bookmark it for future reference.

Table of Contents:

Personal Google Accounts Versus School Google Accounts

Your new Dwight Englewood Google Apps account works very similarly to any personal Google account that you may have. It provides access to gMail, docs, calendar, and many other google services. It is important to understand, however, that they are SEPARATE ACCOUNTS. While you can share data between them, you need to do that explicitly. It won't happen automatically. You also should be aware of some issues that might crop up between your personal google / gmail account and your D-E Google Apps Account --

You can no longer use your Dwight-Englewood email address to login to your personal Google account. Here are some instructions for how to dis-associate your personal account from your Dwight-Englewood email address. You will not be able to log into Dwight-Englewood services if you have your DE.org email address associated with a personal account.

You also may sometimes get a message that looks like this when you sign in:

This means that you previously logged into your personal account. To switch to your DE account, simply click "Switch Accounts."

Login

You may access almost any Google application using your standard D-E username and your D-E network password.  You will be redirected to the My DE website (aka Whipple Hill) to enter this information.  This is normal as your My DE login is connected with the D-E Google Apps login. If a website asks you to sign-in using your Google Account, you can use your D-E email address (i.e. doej@d-e.org).

Email

D-E's GroupWise email system was replaced by DEmail in March 2010. DEmail is D-E specific version of Google's Gmail.  If you have used a personal Gmail account, you will find you already know how to use DEmail as the systems are almost identical. For information including how to do common tasks in DEmail see the DEmail introduction page.

Calendar

This calendar tool replaces the calendar functionality that we had in GroupWise. More information on how to use the calendar tool in Google to view personal and shared calendars including course teaching schedules is available on the DE-Calendars page.

Docs

D-E Docs tips

Picasa

Picasa (aka Google Photos) is a program that you can install on your tablet to edit and organize photographs. Picasa also has a web component (Picasa Web Albums) that integrates with your Dwight-Englewood / Google Account enabling you to share your photographs with others by creating shared albums of your pictures. You can use both of these programs independent of one another, but when used together, you can synchronize folders of pictures on your computer with shared web albums on the Internet. By using the D-E contacts list in our Google Apps account, you can easily share photo albums with the entire school, groups of students and staff, or with people outside of campus. Of course you can also make albums public for the world to see.

Picasa Tips

Connecting Mobile Phones

Instructions for mobile phone users can be found here

Google+

Google+ is a new social networking service, which has some similarities to Twitter and Facebook, launched by Google in the summer of 2011. Logging in requires a Google account.  However, as of November 2011, users were not able to login to Google+ using a K12 Apps for Education account, and Google had not announced when this would be enabled.  Your D-E account is a K12 Apps for Ed account so it will not yet work with Google+. 

Service Status

Google posts the technical status of services used at D-E on the Google Apps Status Dashboard.

Troubleshooting

If you are having a problem using a Google service, which includes DE mail, Google Docs, Calendar and others, you might have a problem with your browser.  If you are not using Mozilla Firefox, try that first.  If you are using Firefox, try another browser on your computer. If the problem works in one browser but not another, clearing the cache and cookies for the browser may fix the problem.

How to clear the browser cache and cookies

Directions for clearing the cache and cookies for a variety of browsers are available via these links:

• How to clear the Cache
• How to clear Cookies