Google Apps for Education: A useful tool

Google Apps is a free email and collaboration tool

It can be accessed from http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/edu/

An FAQ from the website is reproduced here



What is Google Apps for Education?

Google is currently offering schools a hosted solution for their email, calendar, and chat through Google Apps for Education, our integrated communication and collaboration solution. Additionally, you can complement the core suite to meet your users' needs, with access to dozens more Google applications.
Core Google Apps for Education suite includes:

• Gmail: Email storage and search tools that help your students find information fast and instant messaging from right inside their accounts.
• Google Calendar: Students can organize their schedules and share events and calendars with others.
• Google Talk: Students can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free anytime, anywhere in the world
• Google Docs: Share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Collaborate in real-time with your team or with your whole school. You can publish final documents to the entire world, too.
• Google Sites: Work together to keep related documents, web content and other information in one place, on one site.
• Google Video for education: A video hosting and sharing solution that enables schools and other organizations to use video as an effective medium for internal communication and collaboration.