Licence fees can be a real restriction when trying to provide ICT resources for teachers and students. One way around this problem is by using free software, but this can be quite an administrative task to tie it all together in a meaningful way.
Google Apps ( http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html ) provides over 7 Gb of individual storage for email, word-processor, spreadsheet, presentation, calendars, web-site creation, instant messaging and a shared start-page for no fee. All these services are accessed through a standard web-browser, in many languages, with a facility for working with your documents and mails even when not connected to the internet.
If you team Google Apps with a free Operating System like Ubuntu for client machines, then you have a powerful and modern ICT solution for a school, or group of schools - and all for free.
At our school, we have successfully deployed this system for our secondary school students with a good level of uptake and approval from students and staff.
Any other Google Apps users out there?
