The training is excellent; we use it a lot and find it to be the most valuable feature. We also use many of the solution's admin tools to manage users and devices and create Google Classrooms based on a connection with our student information system. These tools are quick and easy to learn how to use, which helps us maximize our time efficiency. Amplified for Education is flexible and customizable; Amplified IT responded quickly whenever we filed support tickets, typically because we try to achieve something not necessarily unique but not a one size fits all tool. Their staff has always been responsive, not just promptly, but in a solution-focused manner too. They help us resolve issues as quickly as possible. The Google for Education Audit feature is a well-supported and wonderful tool for diagnosing problems and recommending solutions. We initially used it when taking over a Google environment we didn't establish to figure out what we had and where we wanted to be. With the significant change in the educational environment through COVID, many more tools and settings became available in the admin console, so it's hard for us as a small department to keep track of what is where and what the best practices are. Our most recent audit immensely helped us with that, specifically in developing an action plan to take steps moving forwards. We've been reviewing bits of that audit process for four months, as the report is comprehensive and provides much information. The audit feature is currently driving our action plan for our Google environment. We've been using the Little SIS Premium feature for six or seven years, and it's excellent for helping IT admins to roster Google Classroom classes. It partners with our student information system to create Google Classrooms for our teachers, which is very helpful. It can be daunting for a music teacher to make all the classrooms required for 400 middle schoolers and 650 high school students, but Little SIS can do it for them. The Little SIS Premium feature is very helpful for assisting IT admins in performing bulk updates; because of our audit, we used some of the admin tools to bulk update users and clean up our user accounts. It would be harder to do that through a tool like GAM, as it's more challenging to learn, and we don't have the time to put into it. During the testing season, when multiple computer-based assessments are going on simultaneously, the ability to move the devices of whole buildings or grade levels has been an enormous time-saver. We can run the tool to make bulk updates and streamline a job that would otherwise take a full day or multiple days down to around an hour. Without Amplified for Education, I doubt we could sustain what we currently do with regard to computer-based assessment. The service is excellent in helping us work with Google Workspace for Education. It allowed us to understand what the different settings mean and trained us on how to best use Workspace for Education most efficiently. Workspace has various levels, and we are at a paid level, so Amplified ensures we get the best value for our dollar by helping us learn how to best use the paid features and tools. That makes a big difference because we shouldn't be spending taxpayer dollars on tools we aren't using. The security investigation tools and reporting are also beneficial and make a difference for us.
