Home Office 365 Day 30 – Lessons Learned: 30 Days with Office 365 for Educators

Day 30 – Lessons Learned: 30 Days with Office 365 for Educators

10/24/2014

30 Days with Office 365 for Educators - Day 30

The first lesson learned is that 30 Days is not enough time to cover everything that I would have liked to regarding the educational uses of Office 365. Believe it or not, there is more.

When I started this series I thought I would have ample time to cover the topics I wanted, I was wrong. There are still many topics to learn more about that I haven’t even mentioned.

I have not had time to talk about the powerful collaboration capabilities of online Lync Meetings or the ability to record and present while sharing your Desktop screen with others. Alas, I also did not have time to discuss SharePoint Sites, SharePoint Apps, SharePoint Blogs, or Tasks.

Another lesson learned is that I need a two-pronged strategy when discussing Office 365 with fellow educators. Much of this series has been focused at the awareness level and basic tool use. This introduction is necessary because there are a lot of misconceptions about Office 365. Educators also need to see everyday examples of how teachers are using Office 365 in the classroom. Once you know about the possibilities you can work to make them become a reality in your own classroom.

Many do not know about the co-authoring ability or the versatility and ease of use that OneDrive offers for sharing and collaborating. If you are not aware of the tools available, you will not know about the possibilities. Awareness alone however is not enough, you also need to identify a purpose that will drive your implementation for accomplishing your goals.

Begin with the end in mind. What is the problem you are trying to solve? What is the situation you are trying to improve? Why? Once the problem/situation is identified in a crystal clear way there are a multitude of tools to you assist with achieving the desired results.

I have also tried to weave in practical teaching and learning opportunities in this blog series that are now possible thanks to the new collaboration and sharing features built-in to Office 365. My posts about SAMR and doing “different” things were meant to get you thinking of all the possibilities available to us today. Using Excel Forms to collect data about neighborhood trees was a simple example that can be easily adapted for any subject area. We are only limited by our imagination for how we can use these new technologies to benefit student learning. Below are just a few:

Email:

Outlook Web App (OWA) - everyone needs email, if you use Lync get ready to supercharge your communication capabilities

Share, Share, Share:

Share a Word document with view only or edit rights for co-authoring
Share an Excel document with view only or edit rights for co-authoring
Share a PowerPoint document with view only or edit rights for co-authoring

Note-taking:

Use OneNote for note-taking (do not underestimate the note-taking potential for student learning, especially when notes are shared between teacher/student, the ultimate in formative assessment)

ePortfolios:

Use OneNote for e-portfolios – easy ability to share with teacher/student/others, OneNote supports text, pictures, audio, video, and handwriting, annotations, and drawings using digital ink

Forms:

Easily create forms to automatically collect data using Excel Forms

Instant Messaging and Video Conferencing:

Use Instant Messaging and Video Conferencing (Lync enabled) for on-demand collaboration needs

Desktop Sharing:

Share your Desktop (option to record) during Lync Presentations

Meetings:

Easily set up ad hoc meetings with Lync Meetings online

SharePoint:

Setup a SharePoint website to easily share and disseminate information to groups
Take advantage of SharePoint apps for specific workflows
Setup a blog to keep others informed of special projects

New Possibilities

With Office 365 we now have the capability for easily creating and sharing documents in real-time. Think about that for a minute and what it can mean to you as a teacher. Teachers are all about sharing new information, it is our job.

Co-authoring is as easy as inviting another Office 365 user to your online document and giving them editing rights. You can easily do this with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents that are stored in the cloud with OneDrive.

As a teacher if you do not want to give students editing rights you can simply share a link as “View Only”. This offers many new possibilities for the paperless classroom as it is so easy to do. Instead of sending out attachments you can simply provide a link. If you need to correct the document the link refers back to the most recent updates.

You will need to develop your own teaching and learning workflows but the possibilities are immense. Office 365 offers individual users unprecedented sharing ability. You will also need to exercise common sense and be aware that not all information should be shared. Remember, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Be sure to follow your organizations policies and always promote the responsible use of instructional technologies, for teachers and students.

As a final thought, Office 365 provides educators access to enterprise level tools that now make it easy to collaborate with others independent of geographic location.

Probably the biggest lesson learned is that Office 365 is greater than the sum of its parts. Having one organization-wide directory allows access to all the components of Office 365 and eliminates many access barriers. No need to worry about installing items on individual computers. Everyone in the organization now has FANTASTIC cloud-based collaboration tools available 24/7/365.

Office 365 will take some time to learn but as you master each component you will be able to take your teaching and learning to the next level.

To the cloud!

Keep on Learning,
Tom Grissom, Ph.D.

Twitter: @tomgrissom

http://eiu.edu/itc

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