You will do this assignment in groups. Imagine that you and your team mates have started a small company. You will need a domain name, Web site, email accounts, etc.
Register a domain and establish a Google Apps account
Begin by picking and registering a domain name using Godaddy.com. (They allow you to modify the DNS entries for your domain and have low first-year fees for unpopular top-level domains).
Next go to Google Apps and set up a free account for your domain. When your account is set up, you will have an administrative "dashboard" like the one shown in the handout. Google has posted help for all subsequent steps here.
Create a user account for each member of your group, making each of you an administrator.
Google requires that you verify ownership of your domain. You can do that by modifying the home page that comes with your domain from Godaddy or by adding a DNS entry using a random name they generate for you. The Google help instructions for doing that are here. (Note -- the alias should be the random string only -- it should not contain your domain name).
Exchange a few test emails between group members to be sure things are working and to get a feel for Google's mail service.
Create a home page and add services
Once you are comfortable, create a Web home page for your group -- list your names and any clever thing you can think of to put on the page. Feel free to add as many pages as you want to as a learning exercise, but one will suffice.
Add at least one "gadget" to your home page. You can see my example (a daily quote from Einstein) here.
Using the add services link on your dashboard, add docs and a start page. This will enable your users to create shared documents using Google Docs and will let them customize a login page which can include many gadgets.
Establish simpler domain names
You will notice that your Web home page has the awkward default URL of:
http://www.<domain>-a.googlepages.com/homeChange that to
http://www.<domain>To make that change, you must first add a CNAME entry to the DNS then change the URL on the Google Apps dashboard. Use the Godaddy DNS control panel as before to create a CNAME record setting www to point to ghs.google.com. Once that is done, you can change the URL using the Web Pages service settings on the Dashboard.
Once your new URL is working, print out a screen shot of your group Web page showing the new URL and turn it in.
Also print out the management dashboard from Google Apps to turn in.
Finally, print a copy of your Godaddy DNS control panel to turn in.
That completes the minimum assignment, but you can keep playing around if you want more practice. (Recommended).
Extra practice
You can change the other services my adding the CNAMEs calendar, docs, and start to the DNS each pointing to ghs.google.com. Do those too if you want a bit more practice, but I am not going to test them.
Email requires both adding MX records and setting up a CNAME. Google help has instructions for that here.
Godaddy has already set up mail and email CNAMEs. If you change one of those to point to ghs.google.com, you will me able to use it in your email URL (for example, mail.yourdomain). You can do so for practice, but I will not test that either.