LPS has "Gone Google."

When school ended on December 16th, we jumped into full swing by migrating our email, calendar and contact data from our Exchange server to Google.  The migration took 23 hours in which over 296 gigabytes of data and 4,000,000 emails, calendar appointments and contacts were safely uploaded.  We were offline for about 10 minutes while the email routing took effect across the Internet.  If you'd like see a timeline for the migration, click here.

School started this week and our staff came back to a new system for email and calendar.  We had implemented Google for our students over a year and half ago which included most teachers as well.  This laid a ground-work for an easier transition for staff as most across the district had a familiarity with the new servces before we launched.  Nonethless, the shift did cause some folks discomfort, which was to be expected.  Indeed, an entire field of research is dedicated to Cognitive Ergonomics which investigates how the brain thinks and works.  What is amazing is how perceptive the eye is and how much subliminal processing our brains do every moment.  A shift in normal, expected visual signals can be disconcerting and even alarming.  Insitinctively, we humans have spent the bulk of our existence (as a species) outside and on watch for danger.  When something looks mildly different in our environments, even if we don't pay it close attention, it can trigger a danger response.  It's basic survival.

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