Any primary schools out there using M365 platform?

[cwuk100]

Hi I would interested to hearing primary schools experience in using the M365 platform in the classroom?

[itskdog]

In my experience of a primary classroom, you just have the teacher's PC at the IWB with ActivInspire or SMART Notebook, and maybe a second PC for the children to use during wet play.

 

The free 100TB storage on SharePoint provides a great way to move existing local file shares for storing your flipcharts/notebooks.

 

Cloud Drive Mapper is your friend (£500pa for primary schools, hasn't had a price increase in many years) to make the SharePoint sites appear in File Explorer without the faff of the OneDrive sync app when syncing a large number of files. Even automatically logs in if devices are Entra-joined (e.g. managed by Intune).

 

We still use shared logins in the ICT Suite to keep things easy for the teachers (I know it's not quite KCSiE compliant, but I'm not the IT curriculum lead or DSL, so...). Shared Computer Activation on the PCs gives you the ability to have the same account using Office on >5 machines at once.

[Alex0x7F]

As a former IT Tech and ICT PPA teacher in a primary school, in my experience M365 would have been largely inaccessible for most pupils.

UKS2 (Years 5–6) could potentially manage it, but for the rest of the school it would be difficult to use effectively.
 

We found Google Classroom worked well for UKS2, while J2e worked across all year groups from Foundation to Year 6.

This made ICT much easier for pupils and staff across different devices, iPads in KS1 and then a transition to Chromebooks from Year 3 onwards.