This surely spells the end of some of their own clunkier, often experimental, though always engaging platforms and tools. These are tools I first used in 2001 and picked up a decade later. The OU were in the vanguard of putting education online. Sadly the recent news from The OU is deeply worrying as the level of ‘disruption’, not least with Google For Education and Google per se, but the colossal Coursera.

As an alumnus, forever a potential future student I am still registered and active on my OU Student Blog which I started eight years ago,

G Suite for Education is on my personal Google account, and in my day job where I am well through training to be a Google Educator Level 1 (Certified).

This is above my account – activated 9 days. I have been Google since the start, transferring to Docs, Slides and Sheets to rid my life of hideous Word, PowerPoint and Excel. It has grown gently from a basic and easy to use set of Apps, to a suite of simple to use, intuitive and connected tools that create the most versatile of learning set-ups.

Anyone can sign up for it. Just move your online life over to Google and ditch Microsoft everything for ever.

Get connected, collaborate, use ‘live’ docs and Classroom. Build interactive assignments and share to your students and follow their progress until they submit work for grading …