When Bannari Amman Institute of Technology went in for Google Apps for Education two years ago, it was for higher use of technology in interaction with students and for administration work.
The Google Development Team, including students and faculty, launched in the college in 2013 has used the opportunity and developed several apps that help the faculty, college management, and the students take teaching, administration work, and learning more into the virtual space.
The college observed Google Day on October 7 and a team from Google visited the institute to see the way it has made use of the Google Apps.
Bannari Amman Institute has invested over Rs. 2 crore in creating the required bandwidth, strengthening the network, and in Chrome books. It plans to use the Chrome books extensively, launch an innovation lab, and introduce virtual classrooms too. A Google Chrome Lab at the college was inaugurated on Wednesday.
S.V. Balasubramaniam, chairman of Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, told presspersons here on Wednesday that several activities have been automated and students can access the teaching material anywhere, anytime.
M.P. Vijayakumar, trustee of Bannari Amman Educational Trust, added that Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Forms have been used extensively to send communications to students, interact with parents, get feedback from students, analyse attendance, examination results, etc.
The college has achieved 60 per cent to 70 per cent saving in stationery.
“In the last two years, efficiency levels have improved manifold,” he said.
According to N. Lakshminarayanan, chief executive of Cloudreign Technologies – which is a partner for Google, it has helped as many as 102 institutes in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh use the Google Classroom, Google Chrome Console, etc.
