In December 2009, PCC students received access to several Google Apps for Education tools, including Gmail@PCC, Docs, Google Talk (IM/Chat) and a personal calendar. This service is intended only for students. Accounts are not provisioned for PCC employees. Some faculty and staff may discover they have received these tools due to a current or previous role as a Pima student.
Faculty and staff who wish to explore using Google with their students should request an account from Google. Caveats that faculty must be aware of when using the Google Apps for Education include:
PCC does not host, maintain or secure the content in Google Apps. Therefore, you must be responsible for backing up and securing any content placed in a Google tool. For example, Pima cannot recover an accidentally deleted file, nor will Google provide this service.
You are responsible for protecting your own and your students' intellectual property.
PCC Board of Governors' policies govern the use, transmission and storage of sensitive information, such as Social Security and credit card numbers and student educational records. Highly sensitive, FERPA-protected information may never be stored in personal accounts (i.e., Google, Hotmail, ...)
Google Apps users can invite Gmail@PCC, as well as others outside of Pima who have a Gmail account, to view and co-edit documents or use other collaboration tools. Since PCC has no administrative access to Google Apps, it is your responsibility to ensure that appropriate controls are used to prevent sharing or collaboration by users you do not wish to access the information placed into Google Apps for Education.
Google Apps for Education are separately hosted third party services that are not integrated in any way with Pima's Student Information System, Banner, Blackboard Vista or the MyPima College portal. Since PCC has no administrative access to Google Apps, if a faculty member chooses to use a Google tool for class-related activities with his/her students, that faculty member must manually set access privileges to documents. Best practices are to store graded materials submitted electronically in D2L, your Pima e-mail account or MyPima Course Homepages as they are backed up and retrievable for 1 year.