HWb Cymru Online Learning - Do you use it? (Schools in Wales)

[Olliekai]

Hi,

I've had a lot of pressure from our school leadership team to move our emails from our own office 365 and use Hwb entirely instead.

 

I have a lot of concerns with doing this, including the lack of control over the setup and configuration as well as security concerns.

 

I was wondering what schools use Hwb and how you use it?

Do you use it solely for email and everything or with Google Apps/ O365 etc?

 

I previously worked at a 'Hwb+ Center of Excellence' when that was still a thing and experienced a lot of issues when that was shut down.

 

A stumbling block I keep getting is the answer from the school leadership team that Hwb is compulsory in Wales and we HAVE to use it. However I can only find information that states we have to use it for the online tests. Does anyone know if that is the case?

 

All answers are greatly appreciated

[3s-gtech]

It's not compulsory, yet at least. It must be used for certain things, and it will pay for your users to be able to access it and know their logons. Estyn will want to see it in use, or at least hear mention of it. It's not mandatory to move your email to it, and doing so is no walk in the park (migrating your addresses and domain to it looks like a living nightmare). The loss of control and flexibility looks to be a total no for us - I'm hoping that matching everything offered, on our tenant (with the bonus of a unified login), is enough.

[Olliekai]

It's not compulsory, yet at least. It must be used for certain things, and it will pay for your users to be able to access it and know their logons. Estyn will want to see it in use, or at least hear mention of it. It's not mandatory to move your email to it, and doing so is no walk in the park (migrating your addresses and domain to it looks like a living nightmare). The loss of control and flexibility looks to be a total no for us - I'm hoping that matching everything offered, on our tenant (with the bonus of a unified login), is enough.

 

Thanks!

 

I've briefly looked at email migration and it will absolutely be a nightmare. Hopefully we stick to our own 365 as I've spent a lot of time configuring SSO to various services that we will loose if we go to Hwb.

[3s-gtech]

I can probably put you in touch with a school that have done it, PM if needed. Apparently it’s not so easy to engage Hwb to do this now though.

 

I’m firmly established with our own tenant, as are most of the secondaries in our county. Next step is Salamander to integrate things further, and match that feature of Hwb. Yes, it’s money that could be saved but I think it’s worth the spend at present (and Salamander will save time with year 7 setup on our domain).

[Olliekai]

I can probably put you in touch with a school that have done it, PM if needed. Apparently it’s not so easy to engage Hwb to do this now though.

 

I’m firmly established with our own tenant, as are most of the secondaries in our county. Next step is Salamander to integrate things further, and match that feature of Hwb. Yes, it’s money that could be saved but I think it’s worth the spend at present (and Salamander will save time with year 7 setup on our domain).

 

Thanks! If we end up having too migrate, I'll PM you. I've looked at Salamander and it seems good.

[MkII]

We use Hwb for testing, and host everything our School Governors do on there. Our Head of IT uses j2e with our lower years but that only results in confusion for the learners in my opinion.

Erw apparently wanted us to host our Teams delivery on there but that message wasn't passed down from the local authority.

 

We dirsync from our Local Authority domain so O365 is a single sign on.

Oh.. and want School Data Sync to auto create Teams in Hwb? Sorry, no can do.

 

In my ignorance I've pushed for integration of LA tenant and Hwb but the LA have been unwilling. Probably because of the nightmare you refer to.

 

I feel sorry for the learners coming up from primary school having been taught to use Hwb email. It even confuses our teachers. The Head of IT will ask me to change Hwb password for email! [emoji3061]

 

I wish Welsh Government would wake up and stop wasting money. Many schools in our county have O365 paid for 3 times.

 

I posted this picture on social media recently that kind of highlights the problem.

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by MkII

[Olliekai]

We use Hwb for testing, and host everything our School Governors do on there. Our Head of IT uses j2e with our lower years but that only results in confusion for the learners in my opinion.

Erw apparently wanted us to host our Teams delivery on there but that message wasn't passed down from the local authority.

 

We dirsync from our Local Authority domain so O365 is a single sign on.

Oh.. and want School Data Sync to auto create Teams in Hwb? Sorry, no can do.

 

In my ignorance I've pushed for integration of LA tenant and Hwb but the LA have been unwilling. Probably because of the nightmare you refer to.

 

I feel sorry for the learners coming up from primary school having been taught to use Hwb email. It even confuses our teachers. The Head of IT will ask me to change Hwb password for email! [emoji3061]

 

I wish Welsh Government would wake up and stop wasting money. Many schools in our county have O365 paid for 3 times.

 

I posted this picture on social media recently that kind of highlights the problem.

 

[ATTACH]58045[/ATTACH]

My feeling is WG are pushing Hwb because they wasted so much on Hwb+

 

Hwb would be better off if they turned it into a service that supported schools in setting up O365, particularly for Primaries. Or you know, just thrown into the fires of mount doom.

[MkII]

Or you know, just thrown into the fires of mount doom.

 

 

I hear we're all to be forced over. I'd love to hear something positive from those that are already moved over. It can't be as bad as we all think it is can it??

 

It's all about primary support from where I'm standing. "Hwb meets" have nothing for secondaries. It's a big sales push to primaries. j2e must be laughing all the way to the bank.

[3s-gtech]

Imagine how well the delegation would go down.

 

- "Sorry, I can't fix that. Email Hwb support."

 

- "FIX IT COMPUTER MAN!"

 

You know what a stubborn goat I am. I won't so much push back, as headbutt. Until the LEA provide funding or support for IT, we go our own way.

[Olliekai]

 

I hear we're all to be forced over. I'd love to hear something positive from those that are already moved over. It can't be as bad as we all think it is can it??

 

It's all about primary support from where I'm standing. "Hwb meets" have nothing for secondaries. It's a big sales push to primaries. j2e must be laughing all the way to the bank.

 

j2e absolutely are.

[Olliekai]

Imagine how well the delegation would go down.

 

- "Sorry, I can't fix that. Email Hwb support."

 

- "FIX IT COMPUTER MAN!"

 

You know what a stubborn goat I am. I won't so much push back, as headbutt. Until the LEA provide funding or support for IT, we go our own way.

 

I’ve been told to say exactly that.

 

I was told of staff loose a file on Hwb and they haven’t backed up is their fault and to use the hwb helpdesk (email)

 

I did point out that me saying that to a teacher when they’ve lost a file they need for next lesson would probably result in me getting a severe concussion but no one seemed to care.

[MkII]

We very nearly moved everything to Hwb this half term. We decided against eventually as there were unknowns that may have disrupted online learning which we couldn't risk.

 

I learned a lot more about the process as a result.

 

Teams and Google Classroom are both synced from SIMS, and it's a simple process in Salamander to activate them on request.

That's the limit of your control of Teams. You get what you're given.

Hwb's idea seems to be that everything should be teacher led, so they create and manage Teams, owners and members themselves. It's not the techs job.

Hwb archive teams at the end of each academic year.

 

You have to lose your domain in the process of masking the Hwb domain. Obviously as Hwb need to use the domain name as the alias and for forwarding.

You'll still have access to your old Microsoft tenant, as long as you pay for it, by using the onmicrosoft address. (We would make everything read only).

Users log into Hwb/O365 using their Hwb usernames.

We will migrate old emails to Hwb.

 

We've started to create new usernames to match Hwb usernames to lessen confusion.

 

I think that's everything. I might have missed out some points.

 

We now plan to make the move at the beginning of the summer break in 2021.

Edited October 27, 2020 by MkII

[neathneathneath]

We use Hwb at our school and find it pretty good. Like the idea of domain masking.

 

I agree that you will in effect lose your domain as hwb would need the domain’s mx records to point to their mail servers.

 

Is it possible after changeover to setup custom email addresses like [email protected] or [email protected] or are we stuck with the

Current hwb email addresses?