Q:  How will this affect me?

• YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS WILL NOT BE CHANGING, only the way you access your e-mail will change. 

• The transition to the new system will be a clean slate. If you want to keep any e-mails received before the switch over they will need to either be printed out or forwarded to a personal e-mail address or to the temporary transition address provided by Google (outlined below). FYI, the best solution is to use the temporary addresses as e-mails sent to the temporary transition addresses will flow into the new system as soon as it is up and running!

Q:  Okay, if I want to use the temporary transition addresses, how do I do it?

• You have two options here.  If you only want to keep a few older emails just forward them individually to username@larchmontcharter.org.test-google-a.com (where you will substitute your current email name such as Gene or Alice or Sherry where I have written "username").   When you log into the new email system those emails will be waiting for you!

• The second option is to additionally setup the current GoDaddy mail system to forward all new incoming mail to the username@larchmontcharter.org.test-google-a.com address.  This is a great thing to do since it will ensure that any mail that comes in over the next few days will automatically be forwarded to the new mail system, eliminating any chance of missed emails.  

Q:  I currently use Microsoft Outlook (or a similar mail program).  Does this affect me?

• Outlook users don't have to worry about losing their old mail since it is not hosted by GoDaddy but is actually on your computers.  However, come Monday your mail will not automatically be coming into your Outlook system.  To access your mail you will need to log into the new web based system just like everyone else.

Q:  But I like my Outlook.  Can I still use it?

• ·Yes, you will be able to setup the new system to sync with your Outlook, but do yourself a favor and try to use the Google mail system for a few weeks.  I used to be addicted to Outlook too, but once you get used to Google's mail system you'll come to appreciate its ease of use and intuitive design.  Come on, you can do it. 

 Q:  I am totally confused.  Who can I call for help?

• ·That would be me, Tucker Carney, father of kindergartner Finn Carney and LCS resident Gooroo (as in Google Guru).   My email is tuckercarney@gmail.com and my phone is 323-377-6607. 

Q:  How do I access my e-mail starting Monday April 23rd?

• Step 1) The Login Page

• Prior to April 23rd you would have gone to http://email.larchmontcharter.org to retrieve your emails.    As of April 23rd, the new mail access address is just one letter different.  Going to http://mail.larchmontcharter.org will bring up the page displayed below:

 

Q: You already told me that my username would remain the same, but what about my password?

• Your user names are all the same as they’ve ever been, and the first time you login you will use “larchmont” as your password.  The system will promptly ask you to change that password to something you choose.   

  

STEP 2) Now you’re in the new Larchmont Mail system, and it looks like this:

Some of you are saying “Hey that looks like Gmail.”  You’re right, it is Gmail -- so if you know Gmail you are essentially done with the lesson.   If you don’t use Gmail it might take you a few days to adjust, but I can just about guarantee you will end up preferring this email system to the old one.  For one thing, it will let you hold A LOT more email than the GoDaddy system.  But more importantly, it is just way more intuitive. 

I’d have to make this tutorial 20 pages to go over all the intricacies and advantages of Gmail, so I think instead I’ll just let you all get started with it and I’ll volunteer to give a live tutorial down the road to anyone who wants one.    The one thing you should all know is that Gmail treats email exchanges as “conversations” instead of as individual messages.  How this translates to you is a lot easier to show than explain, but I’ll give it a shot.  With most email systems, if you send me an email and I reply and then you reply back and so on, each of our replies to each other exists as separate messages in the system.  Gmail is “intelligent” enough to recognize that each of those messages is actually part of one conversation, so it groups those messages together automatically.  It isn’t easy to conceptualize, but it is definitely the trait of Gmail that people love most.  It is especially valuable when you are having an email “conversation” with multiple people.   (In the early days of Larchmont Charter School when there were essentially just seven of us doing all the work we often found ourselves bogged down with email that was often times already outdated.  Then every one of us switched to Gmail and it literally changed everything.  We no longer wasted time answering the same question 10 times, etc) 

 

Q:  I see links on the page for other things like "calendar".  Can I use those?

• Absolutely!  Now that we are using Google Applications for Larchmont Charter we also have access to a bunch of other things besides email, most notably the Google Calendar.  I’m not going to go into detail here, but again there are a ton of things you can do with this.  Most notably you can share and subscribe to calendars with other people if you choose.  Below is an example where you can see the calendar I’ve setup for the volunteers in Kimberly’s class in red as well as The Master Calendar for LCS in Purple, and my personal calendar in Green.  FYI, anyone that uses Google Calendar can subscribe to the LCS Master Calendar by searching “Larchmont Charter School” where it says “search public calendars”.  I’ve setup this calendar more as an example of what we can do, but I hope that someone will take this calendar over and keep it updated so we can actually utilize it.

Q:  Any other things I can do with this new system? 

• Yes, Google's applications include spreadsheets, documents and even a new power-point like program.  And, you can also utilize a "start page" to access all of these applications.  If you go to http://start.larchmontcharter.org you will see a customized start page for people who like having a “dashboard” of information on their screen.  Once logged in you can see a snippet of you mail, calendar, and various other “widgets” you choose for the dashboard.   You can customize the right and center columns with whatever “widgets” you like, while the left side will always be your LCS Mail and Calendar.  This is what it looks like: