Lumio by SMART vs Google Workspace for Education: Which is a better fit?

Andrew P.: My name is Andrew. I'm a director of Family Ministries. I give Google Workspace for Education four out of five. And for more reviews like this, click below. Prior to switching to Google Workspace for Education, we were using a couple different Microsoft products to approximate the kinds of services Google provided. While the Microsoft products gave us almost all the same features, they weren't as tightly integrated. And Google really allowed us to use tools that spoke to the needs of students, as well as to the needs of teachers and administrators. We chose to go with Google Workspace for Education for a couple different reasons. The first and primary one was that we loved our Google Chromebooks and the ability to manage our Google Workspace and our Chromebooks from one admin panel, one unified system. That was really appealing. We appreciated the organizational units and the way they're deployed in the Google Workspace for Education world. It made it really easy for us to turn on particular features for different grades and different ages of students and turn them off for others. We also appreciated the fact that all of our users had Google credentials, and those credentials allowed them to easily sign up and log in to a bunch of different educational software packages. Those were some of the reasons we went with Google for Education. The onboarding process for Google Workspace for Education was pretty seamless. We had a little bit of an issue with our licenses coming through a reseller that we used for other kinds of tech subscriptions, but once we got that piece sorted out and actually had the licenses in hand, the process of assigning them, of getting our users information transferred was pretty easy. We continue to have some challenges related to helping our users understand when they are using their Google Workspace for Education credentials and when they're using their personal Gmail. That has more to do with the users than the platform, but that process of getting people to think through, "Okay, I'm in my Google Workspace world," has been one of the small challenges we've had in getting our organization moved onto that Google for Education Workspace. A couple of recommendations if you're thinking about using Google Workspace for Education in your context. The first is whether or not the Google platform is going to integrate easily with the hardware you're already using. If you're in a Chromebook environment, it probably makes a lot of sense to use Google Workspace as well. You already have a bunch of Google products, and a bunch of your administrative tasks are going to live in the same place. If you're in a Microsoft kind of environment for your devices, your PCs, then something from Microsoft's education offerings might make more sense. Another thing you might keep in mind is the way licenses and fees work. We, at the moment, pay for our faculty and staff to have licenses, and students get them for free. Depending on the plan you're looking at, and when you start the transition to a Google environment, that fee structure might be different, so that's something to take into account. For our organization, that was a affordable way to access this kind of software. Depending on the number of students and the kind of configuration of your environment, the fees might be more. And while they're generally reasonable, that's one thing to keep in mind is what licenses you need and which ones Google will give you for free.