Adventures in Office 365

It’s been a while since we started the whole back-end transition over to Office 365, so I figured it was about time I wrote up some thoughts on the experience.

To give you some background, our organization has about 1200 users, currently using FirstClass for email. Last year we set up Google Apps for Education. While a few users did experiment with GAFE tools, I believe that has mostly died out and it is mainly used for SSO purposes for our LMS – Haiku.

This year we took a hard look at where we wanted to go. We felt like a cloud based solution was preferable because it provides:

• Lower hardware overhead
•  Less software maintenance
• More reliability with multiple levels of backup and redundancy  
•  Better continuity in a disaster

(Looking at the solutions, I saw that Google was EVERYWHERE, which is good, I guess. If you’re into the mainstream sort of thing. My inner hipster was repulsed.)

"Google Apps are so mainstream they make my head hurt."

So, who are the players and what do you get?

Google Apps for Education

• Free for education
• Cloud based
• Gmail
• Google apps
• All the Google stuff
• SSO with all Google services and the AD

Microsoft Office 365 (A2 Plan)

• Free for education
• Cloud based
• Outlook email
• Office apps
• AD integration
• SSO internally
• Sharepoint integrated (mostly)

Here's what you need to know about both offerings out of the gate. They're free – yup, they’re free. Sorry businesses, you get to pay.  This is one of those times we get to revel in being in education. Also, summer. 

Odds are good you have some knowledge of Google apps. If you don’t, welcome to 2013, please make yourself at home.  If you need a primer on Google apps, take a look at this.  Here’s the problem with Google Apps. They aren’t Office apps. Yeah, I can hear the sighs and see eye rolls, but here’s the deal –there are some novice users out there who are thrown by this.  Office 365 uses Office Web Apps in your browser, in the same way Google uses Google Apps. The only difference is that they are like Word, Excel and Powerpoint “lite”. The interfaces are extremely familiar – just missing a few buttons. If you need those buttons, it’s really easy to pull the documents down to your Office applications on your computer, open them up and then save them back to the cloud. Doing this, users have anywhere access and begin to understand working in this way. So what apps do you get?

•  Word – Yep, it’s Word. You’ll miss the drawing tools, advanced layout, mailing, references and review tabs in the ribbon.
• Excel – You might recognize this as… Excel. Still missing some of the functionality of the desktop application, but (and this is a big one) it does Excel formulas – right there in the browser.
•  Powerpoint – Want to collaborate on a presentation? Now you can, without converting or any of that jazz.
• Lync - You may not be as familiar with this one. This is a collaboration application that let's you chat, video chat and share your desktop with other users in and out of the organization - neat!

What’s that you say? You need more functionality than the Web Apps? No problem, just click the “Open in Word” (or Powerpoint or Excel) button in the Web App ribbon and BOOM! The document is downloaded to your Office application. You make your changes and when you save it’s zapped back up to the cloud. So what's the downside? Well, they aren't as collaborative as Google Apps. One user at a time in Word documents online, Excel allows multiple users, but you can't see their edits - not great. My friendly Microsoft rep tells me that those features are coming "very soon", so I'm hopeful.

Ok, so being everywhere is actually good. More support, a community of users to turn to. So why didn’t we go Google? (Warning: technical content) Our entire infrastructure is built upon Microsoft Active Directory. Microsoft’s Office 365 environment integrates directly into the existing AD environment to leverage all the work we have already done to set up our network and transition that to the cloud. Propagate users, permissions, groups, everything to the cloud. No muss, no fuss. To be fair, Google has connectors that will tie-in to the Active Directory to accomplish the same thing, however, I believe the more moving parts a system has, the more likely it is to fail. In theory, Office 365 is a simpler system.

Next week, look for the the exciting tale of our Office 365 implementation. 

photo credit: Radu Lungu via photopin cc

Who Needs Good C&I? I've got Apps!

This Thanksgiving, I'm blessed to be spending time with my family, including my 4 year old nephew, Miles. While it's always a joy to hang out with my little pal, I'll admit that this time I have ulterior motives in our time together. I brought along one of the fifteen iPad minis that I bought for our Lower School students and I needed a guinea pig. I've spent the better part of the morning having Miles test the apps that I've loaded up on my test machine. Some of the apps are a hit, some are a miss - this is not news to you. Overall, I am amazed at what apps can do. Let's face it, before the iPad we didn't have a technology that we could drop into the hands of a four year old and have them start learning effectively and independently.

Man, those birds sure are angry...

The problem is that Miles is happy to play with apps whether they are academically effective or not. I feel like we are at a place in education where it is becoming very easy to look like we are being academically effective, even if we aren't.  A class of students who are on task, quietly working on "educational" apps can be very compelling. Unless we have strict academic oversight of these devices, I worry that iPad enabled classes can devolve to nothing more than high-tech busy work.  To prevent this, I think the following components are necessary:

1. Vision - Without a global vision for integrating apps in curriculum and instruction, their effectiveness will be hit or miss.
2. Belief - Buy in from both faculty and administration on the vision for apps in the classroom.
3. Standards - Create a set of academic and technical standards that apps must meet for approval. 
4. Implementation - An articulated plan of implementation promotes realistic expectations in all parties.

I understand that no one in education needs more added to their plate, but the only way to effectively move these components into place is by committee. Administrators can't push it alone, the IT department can't drive the train and it can't be left to the individual teachers. However, if all of these folks come together and we leverage their expertise to vet high quality apps and integrate them into the existing curriculum, I believe that we might just change the face of education. 

photo credit: aperturismo via photopin cc

Views are my own, but can still get me fired

What if you had access to a literary device that would serve as a perpetual "get out of jail free" card? A tool that could erase any transgression, simply by being there? Evidently this dream is a reality and is within reach. From what I gather, if you drop a disclaimer in the bio of your social network profiles, you can get away with anything.

You've seen them, you may even use them - the little addendum stating "my views are my own". In theory, this is a great idea. Odds are good that you don't speak for your employer and don't want anyone to think that you are trying to. The problem is that your employer may not agree. They might actually feel like your actions are a reflection on the organization, whether on the clock or not. If you are an educator or educational administrator you have to be thoughtful about how you represent yourself online in the same ways you are thoughtful about how you act in the real world. If an educator slips on a t-shirt that states in a clear bold font "My views are my own" then has a wild night, gets hammered and passes out in the front yard of the student council president, odds are good that no one will think he or she is representing the school district. Odds are also good that the educator will need to polish off the ol' resume.

But that post had 312 likes!

If you want to be controversial online or in person, great. Just don't bet your career on a disclaimer.

Political Tweeting

As I watched last night's debate, I followed the #debate and #debates hashtags.

An image from the good old days - I think they've started to grow apart.

I thought it was really interesting to see the number of educators throwing out their personal political biases. I am decidedly slanted in my personal politics, but you probably wouldn't know it from my tweets. I guess it all boils down to audience for me. I figure, if there is a chance one of my students will read my tweets, then I am compelled to be objective. @chrislehmann made a great point in this tweet:

This is important, and worthy of discussion. Unfortunately, I think the Twitter lends itself more to 140 character blasts about how awesome my guy is and how he is clobbering yours in the debate, rather than in depth discussion about platforms. 

As an educator, I want to keep the Twitter objectively political and keep my personal biases in check.

That's What Friends are For?

Don't let the title of this post fool you. I won't be tossing out nuggets of relational wisdom or penning a scathing commentary of one of my friends. See, this year has been an eye-opener for me. I learned that corporations are actually "people" and today, on my way to work, I learned that TV shows can be your friends. Ok, so the actual quote from Danielle Mullin, a marketing executive for ABC Family, is:

"We act like a friend to our fans," she says. "And friends don't only talk to you between nine and five. And friends don't use a corporate tone of voice when they talk to you. So they actually do think they're speaking to their friend. And that's really an incredible opportunity for marketers."

Part of the ABC Family story on NPR centered around the show Pretty Little Liars which is aimed at females aged 12-34. Many of them in our classes. That really struck me. The idea that teams of people devoted to marketing a TV show are out there "acting" like friends to our students is disturbing. There is an enormous marketing machine operating 24/7 on information about our kids. I believe its goal is not only to change their purchasing habits, but also to change who our kids are fundamentally. The marketing machine wants to create good consumers, not necessarily good citizens. 

I am a child of the 70's and spent A LOT of time parked in front of the TV (I know, shocking - a tech guy who didn't get out much as a child) and ingested a massive amount of kid-centric marketing. However, I was never under the impression that I could build a relationship with characters on a TV show. 

Well, there was that one time I thought I would marry Josie, 

from TV's Josie and the Pussycats, but I was like, five. 

The point is that kids today are at an unfair advantage. Media marketers are using our kids' desire for relationship to manipulate them, but who is explaining this to the kids? We focus so much on internet safety, but with the sheer volume and complexity of media messages kids are dealing with these days, I really believe we have to beyond safety and teach them how to manage media. How does your school or district handle this? Is there a media literacy program in place?