Microsoft 365 User Adoption for Schools, MATs and Districts

In this episode we speak to teacher and housemaster Henry about using Microsoft 365 in an independent school. Blog post to follow on https://www.clouddesignbox.co.uk/Support the show

Darren meets Ryan for Formative.Support the show

Ian Stuart from Avantis Education talks about the power of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality in teaching and learning.Avantis has supported teachers with classroom technology for almost two decades and now boasts a diverse range of education products, including LearnPad, ClassCharge, ClassConnect and ClassVR.In this podcast episode, Cloud Design Box’s Darren Hemming talks about ClassVR, Avantis World and creating immersive, 360° experiences for students.Embedding Virtual Reality learning experiences inside Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.Avantis World is a virtual reality theme park designed for education. Students and teachers enter the world using VR headsets or any modern browser.“It’s designed to allow teachers to take their classes to places that would usually be impossible to go to or imagine. Some places in the theme park are galleries you can walk around, and others are fully immersive experiences,” Ian explains.“For example, we have a digestive system experience where you can turn into a piece of pizza and travel right through the human body. Other examples include renewable energy and photosynthesis.”Full blog post and video can be found here: https://www.clouddesignbox.co.uk/embedding-vr-and-ar-into-microsoft-teams-and-sharepoint-with-avantis-education/Support the show

In this episode Darren Hemming speaks to Stefan from Lingfield College about the rollout and adoption of 1:1 devices. Find out more about Cloud Design Box at https://www.clouddesignbox.co.ukThe benefits of 1:1 devices in schools with Lingfield CollegeThe Director of Digital Learning at Linfield College talks about the school’s plan to roll out per-student devices to every student and the challenges and benefits that come with digital transformation. Lingfield College is a co-educational independent school in Surrey for pupils aged two to eighteen. Stefan Hagen is the Director of Digital Learning and works with his team to help drive digital learning within the school, working with the school’s partner companies – including Cloud Design Box – to deliver quality technology to staff and students.  The school has bold plans to introduce a per-student device policy – eventually rolling out touch-screen laptops to every student within the school.  In this podcast episode, we discuss the challenges of moving to blended learning, as well as the many benefits that come with a 1:1 device policy in education.  Stefan also outlines what the school has done so far to lay the foundations for this digital learning strategy and what the plan is to accomplish their goal of per-student devices.  A vision for cloud-based learning. Lingfield College had begun looking at ways to “get digital moving”, as Stefan puts it before the pandemic.  But, things didn’t move as quickly as they had hoped and as the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns hit in the UK, the school had to move quickly to deliver quality lessons via Microsoft Teams.  “When we returned to the classroom after lockdown, I was keen to keep the momentum that we had built up going, encouraging staff members to use Teams and OneDrive,” Stefan explains. “However, I realised that many people were fed up with computer screens and that we had to move more slowly and carefully to get everyone on board.”  It was around that time that Lingfield College began working with Cloud Design Box to create a long-term strategy that would enable the school to migrate to the cloud, which would lay the foundations for their 1:1 device policy.  Moving to the cloud. “As they say, when you move house, you have a clear out before you move so you don’t take all your junk with you. And, it was the same as we moved from our old servers to the cloud,” Stefan explains. Cloud Design Box worked with Lingfield College to give staff the time and training they needed to move their resources over to the cloud.  “We set up key milestones and eventually turned the old servers to ‘view-only’ to give staff who hadn’t been able to move resources over yet access without creating a confusing dual system.” 1:1 devices for teachers and school staff.  Moving to the cloud allowed Lingfield College to roll out 1:1 devices for every staff member, allowing teachers to build up their confidence with the new technology.  “This approach made the most sense to us because teachers can get used to the technology as they’re using it for teaching so that when we are ready to roll out 1:1 devices for students, teachers can help resolve some tech issues if they do occur in the classroom.”  Infrastructure challenges that come with 1:1 devices.  As Stefan points out in the podcast, there’s more to think about when rolling out 1:1 devices than simply giving everyone a laptop or tablet.  “Getting the infrastructure right is a challenge. For example, our flooring makes it difficult for us to put charging ports into our classrooms. So we’re now looking at charSupport the show

Jonathan Bishop, CEO & Executive Headteacher of Cornerstone Academy Trust, shares insights on maximizing value with Microsoft 365 for Education. Topics include one-to-one devices versus whiteboards, the importance of prioritizing ICT, funding strategies for student devices, and addressing the digital divide in education.

Marjolein Hoekstra, educator and Microsoft expert, discusses her journey with Microsoft, TweetMeets, MVPs, MSEduCentral, and the best links for educators. The podcast covers navigating the 'frequent EDU links' spreadsheet, a combined newspaper for educators, connecting globally through social media, and resources and initiatives for Microsoft Educators.

Darren speaks to Martin Edworthy, e-learning coordinator at Sacred Heart Catholic High School, about the benefits of migrating to a single tenant in Office 365. They discuss using SharePoint groups for permissions, navigating the platform, empowering students through access to resources and flip learning, and the features of Cloud Design Box for remote learning challenges.

In this podcast, Mark Fuller, IT Director for Bridge Academy Trust, discusses how they improved communication and collaboration using Microsoft 365 and Cloud Box. They merged ten different Microsoft 365 tenants into one to simplify access and promote collaboration. The challenges of collaboration and the process of syncing Active Directory accounts with Office 365 are also explored. The user experience of Microsoft 365 in schools, including the use of Teams and SharePoint, is discussed. The podcast also covers tools and resources in Microsoft Teams, simplifying the login process, enhancing security, and personalizing the Microsoft 365 experience.

In this podcast episode, we speak with Rachael Howarth, Vice Principal of Bradford Girls’ Grammar School about how they’re using Microsoft 365 to assess and engage students in a blended in-classroom and remote learning setting.Rachael walks us through some key ways in which they’re using Microsoft Forms, Class Notebook, Polls and Insights to increase engagement, save teacher time, give feedback and keep an eye on students’ wellbeing.“We’ve been using Class Notebook to engage with students who have been learning from home due to self-isolating. It’s been a blend of live teaching and uploading class resources for those students who share devices and need access to content on-demand,” Rachael tells us. “We’ve also been teaching in school and using tools in Teams to set assignments and rubrics, run polls to get a quick measure of where students are in terms of their learning.”  n the video, Rachael demonstrates how the teachers use polls to help students further embed their learning and see which students have understood the lesson and who may need a recap.“We have been using self-marking quizzes quite successfully – they give the students the answers as they move along,” she explains.“Polls are like the classroom equivalent of holding up mini whiteboards and getting everyone to hold up their answer – you can get a broad sweep of who is understanding and who isn’t.”  This type of interactivity is carried through to providing feedback to students. Teachers at Bradford Girls’ Grammar School are adding audio files to students work to give feedback on assignments. Not only is this engaging for students to actually hear their teacher explain something to them as if they were in the classroom, but it’s also saving teacher time as they don’t need to type or format any additional words.“We’ve also been using audio files for learning objectives – just inserting a clip into a Class Notebook that explains exactly what we want the students to do – they can listen instead of writing out learning objectives and it does save time,” she adds. By using Microsoft 365 in and outside of the classroom, the school has been able to collect valuable data around students’ learning and engagement.  “Some of our students do not have access to the live lessons because they share devices. So we need to look at other metrics to see if they’re participating in other ways: Are they having conversations, are they completing assignments, are they accessing Class Notebook?” Rachael explains.  But, the Insights dashboard goes beyond checking up to see whether students are completing their homework: “It’s been really useful for pastoral support. At one point, we had a large number of users who were working in the middle of the night. So we immediately put out welfare messages to staff, parents and pupils. It gives us the opportunity to have that conversation with our community.”  Bradford Girls’ Grammar School is embracing Microsoft for the future and not simply a remedy to the pandemic:  “We’re learning rapidly – we’ve been on a steep learning curve but we’re implementing these interactive methods of assessment into our practice as we develop as remote teachers. Week on week, we’re getting a high-level engagement on Teams – anything between 190 and 700 daily active users – it shows how useful our students and staff are finding Teams.”Support the show

In this webinar we are joined by Mark Guest from PolyMAT to discuss how the Trust have extended Microsoft Teams and SharePoint further using the Power Platform.Support the show (https://www.clouddesignbox.co.uk)Support the show