GAFE w/o Email Questions

[Dave Waltman]

Thanks so much for responding to my inquiry...

Our school wants to expand GAFE into our Middle School for 6/7th grade students.  From what I understand they prefer to turn email off.  Our Technology Director believes that if email is turned on, then we have to pay per student for the email archiving and recovering (he thinks it would be negligent not to, I guess).  If we turn it off, then we won't have to pay for that service.

So....in my training and support of Google Apps, I emphasize the collaborative power of Google Apps.  Of course, email addresses are used to share with specific users, folders, groups, teachers, etc. 

My questions are around the workflow for collaboration without the use of email addresses.  

I'm guessing that if email is turned off...do things go like this:

1. Login:  Still use selected naming convention/password

2. Student-Student collaboration - when you SHARE, do you enter an email address (even though email is turned off) or a username? Do all names in the domain show up for a student to select from?

3. Student-Teacher collaboration(or just "turning in" a document)-What is the best way to do this? Student shares with teacher username or address? Teacher creates a shared folder?  Other?

4. Teacher -Teacher collaboration - same questions...

Some of you expressed specifically that collaboration without email makes things more difficult and ended up turning it on....what was so difficult about it?

Thanks,

Dave