Gmail and Google Calendar
The three features of Google Calendar that I found most enticing are:

1. Ease of adding and editing events
2. Multiple calendars
3. Ease in sharing calendars

Any tool is only as good as it is useful in making the job either easier or more effective.  No matter how good a tool is, if it is difficult to use then it wont be used.  I know that this is a reality in education.  There are many teachers that are very tech savy and are able to quickly pick and use any new feature or program.  There are also many teachers that with several years of training and a little bit of brainwashing you might get them to turn on a computer.  But the vast majority of teachers are somewhere in the middle, they are not opposed to computers and technology in general, they are just opposed to taking the time to learn how to use it.  This is what makes Google Calendars a powerful and useful tool.  It is very easy to learn and use.  I even tried it out on my wife, I set up a calendar for her and in the space of 15 minutes she was able to add, edit and delete events on her calendar.  (This is how I define ease of event managment.)

This is in my opinion the single most important factor for the Calendar.  I have witnessed many different programs introduced at my school and ease of navigating is by far the most important.  The program is only as useful as it is easy to use.

The next two features are why the teachers at  my school should learn to use Google Calendars. A huge and persistent problem that our school like all school faces is lack of communication.  It is all well and good to say that we just need to communicate better, but between parents and teachers, teachers and students, teachers and administration, teachers and athletics and between teachers and teachers there is a great deal of miscommunication.  Teachers planning too many tests on the same day, teachers planning field trips on the same day as the baseball team leaves early for a ball game.  Multiple Calendars would do so much to address this huge and ongoing problem.  This function joined with the ability to share calendars could elevate so much of this confusion. Not only could I build my own personal, and school calendars, through calendar sharing I could incorporate the Basketball schedule, if I had basketball players as well as quickly view other teachers.

In our school we have students from a variety of grades and with Google calendars parents could incorporate the calendars of their children in different grades into one calendar.   As a parent of multiple children I am very excited about this power.  With a click of a button I can toogle between viewing the  calendar of one of my children to another, as well as building a composite calendar is wonderful advancement.  I am sure that this is possible with other calendars, but I don;t know of any that are free and everyone has access to.

Becuase of my familiarity of Gmail and mail handling in general it was more difficult to decide on the three features of Gmail that I found most exciting.  But I choose:

1. The Universal availablity
2. The task feature
3. The ability to link it with my calendar

Recently at our school it was discussed that move toward Microsoft Outlook as a school so that we would have a general mail handling program as well as link the email program with the calendars.  This plan was ultimately rejected because it was decided that 1) not everyone had Microsoft Outlook and 2) Even if everyone had it not everyone had the same version.  This is why Gmail appealed to me, is as as school we adopted Gmail it would do just what we were looking for with Outlook, and everyone has access to the exact same version, that is pretty powerful and useful.  Those two facts alone make Gmail a force to be reckoned with in education.

I have had a Gmail account for several years and I used it as a "decoy" account.  It was an address that I would use to give to a website to make sure that they never contacted me.  I had another "real" address that I would use for my contacts.  I can see now that there is a lot more to Gmail than I first imagined.  I enjoyed the tasks feature and the ability to quickly and easily prioritize my email.

One other function that I did not mention that is very convenient is the chat function.  Because of the ease of following one strand it transforms an email exchange into a chat.  Even if the "chat" is performed over  the course of several days.