Microsoft live@edu Vs Google Apps for Education.

[enjay]

How do you find the mail filters in GMail and Live@edu? Do they block everything which you would want them to or does some of it get through?

[RabbieBurns]

How do you find the mail filters in GMail and Live@edu? Do they block everything which you would want them to or does some of it get through?

 

We use the "closed campus" setting, which means that only *@*ourdomain.tld can send to and be sent from live@edu

 

If you mean the spam settings and such, I think its the same as the hotmail filters (which hasnt let a spam into my mailbox (of 11 years) for a good long while now )

[plexer]

I get viagra spam mails through live@edu.

 

Also just received this today from MS about the updates coming including Office 365:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu/learn-about-office-365.aspx?locale=en-US&country=US#1

 

But this bit concerned me slightly:

 

Availability and pricing for Office 365 will be announced at a future date.

 

Ben

[enjay]

We use the "closed campus" setting, which means that only *@*ourdomain.tld can send to and be sent from live@edu

 

Presumably that is per-user, not per-domain?

 

If you mean the spam settings and such, I think its the same as the hotmail filters (which hasnt let a spam into my mailbox (of 11 years) for a good long while now )

 

Can we be uber-precise on this and clarify whether the spam hasn't got through at all or merely has been identified as spam and put in the junk folder. I don't think that would be sufficient protection really.

[CyberNerd]

This is the comparative service from google:

Welcome to Postini powered services

 

It is very flexible and can be used for content and spam filtering.

The spam filtering can be done per domain and per user.

[enjay]

It is very flexible and can be used for content and spam filtering.

 

Flexible is good - does it actually work, or does stuff still get through?

[RabbieBurns]

Presumably that is per-user, not per-domain?

 

 

 

Can we be uber-precise on this and clarify whether the spam hasn't got through at all or merely has been identified as spam and put in the junk folder. I don't think that would be sufficient protection really.

 

the closed campus thing is a domain wide setting, but you can change individual mailboxes on or off (although only via powershell I think)

 

as for spam, sorry, my hotmail does get about 10 a month, but into the junk mail folder..

[enjay]

the closed campus thing is a domain wide setting, but you can change individual mailboxes on or off (although only via powershell I think)

That's a faff.

 

as for spam, sorry, my hotmail does get about 10 a month, but into the junk mail folder..

 

That's unacceptable in a school-provided service, IMHO. I've not had that many in 7 years with our current provider.

[RabbieBurns]

That's a faff.

 

 

 

That's unacceptable in a school-provided service, IMHO. I've not had that many in 7 years with our current provider.

 

Thanks my hotmail account, not live@edu.. Im not sure if its the same filtering system (but I just assume it is)

 

Agreed, a lot of non-basic changes of live@edu require powershell. Its pretty straightforward right enough.. but would be so much more manageble if there was a GUI (but then again, its given me a nice intro to PS which I wouldnt have had anyway)

[RabbieBurns]

...

Also just received this today from MS about the updates coming including Office 365:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu/learn-about-office-365.aspx?locale=en-US&country=US#1

 

But this bit concerned me slightly:

 

Availability and pricing for Office 365 will be announced at a future date.

 

Ben

 

Slashdot News Story | Microsoft Announces Web-based Office365

 

rrelated pages and comments there..

[enjay]

Anyone seen where they're getting the figure of $6/user/year from?

[CyberNerd]

Flexible is good - does it actually work, or does stuff still get through?

 

yes. no problems at all so far.

[CyberNerd]

Slashdot News Story | Microsoft Announces Web-based Office365

 

rrelated pages and comments there..

 

 

so, just like google docs? but google are a couple of years ahead of the game already.

[adm1329]

I've been reading up on these, and there really isn't much between them - the key swing point I can find is that Google would allow me in to users' mailboxes, which from a safeguarding point-of-view must be near-essential.

 

My one concern on that is that Google's site doesn't actually say about this, it was cybernerd who confirmed it was possible; this makes me wonder if MS can also do it, but (like Google) they don't say so. Can someone on Live@edu confirm whether it is or isn't possible to view users' mailboxes...

 

We went to Google Apps at the beginning of this year for all of our staff. Now that we are looking into adding student accounts this is a concern, I know I can reset a password on any account and get into it, but is there an easier way to do it? I was going to send a PM to cybernerd to ask about it, but being "new", although I could have swore I joined a few years ago and posted a couple of times, I'm unable to PM until I have 5 posts.

[CyberNerd]

We have single sign on onto our moodle and google, so we just use moodle to 'login as' another student and then access their mailbox from there. We hardly ever need to do it though because the postini filtering is actually rather good.

[GrumbleDook]

One of our schools has SSO between Live@Edu and Moodle ... nice and simple for staff and students.

[RabbieBurns]

One of our schools has SSO between Live@Edu and Moodle ... nice and simple for staff and students.

 

How does that work? Is it true SSO?

 

As far as I was aware, the moodle plugin, whilst working with the same set of credentials, required you to log in to live@edu once you had logged into moodle (at least, thats how it works here)

[jonspurs]

CyberNerd, or anyone else that can help...

I'm still looking into migrating to Google with SSO. I have a query - your school domain - how is it set up?

Right now, for teachers we have, eg:

[email protected]

 

We're looking for students at having

[email protected]

 

So that we can have different rules for different domains (switch off chat, etc), however I've read that postini won't work like this and syncing would have to be done separately. Curious to what you've got set up or have other ideas?

 

Thanks for your time and help,

 

Jon

[CyberNerd]

CyberNerd, or anyone else that can help...

I'm still looking into migrating to Google with SSO. I have a query - your school domain - how is it set up?

Right now, for teachers we have, eg:

[email protected]

 

We're looking for students at having

[email protected]

 

So that we can have different rules for different domains (switch off chat, etc), however I've read that postini won't work like this and syncing would have to be done separately. Curious to what you've got set up or have other ideas?

 

Thanks for your time and help,

 

Jon

 

You can turn services such as chat on and off for different groups of users, you don't need a separate google domain.

Likewise with postini - you can create sub domains so they can get a different level of filtering than staff.

we just have a single shool.org.uk domain

[gshaw]

How does that work? Is it true SSO?

 

As far as I was aware, the moodle plugin, whilst working with the same set of credentials, required you to log in to live@edu once you had logged into moodle (at least, thats how it works here)

 

It's SSO of sorts, pretty much works like this...

 

- you have to create the account in Moodle

- you have to create the account in Live

- you set the Auth Method in Moodle to LiveID and put the Live@Edu email address in the Moodle MSN ID field

- you click a login link on your Moodle site http://www.moodlesite.com/auth/liveid/login.php

- you sign in with your Live account

- you sometimes get the annoying Consent box come up which you have to click allow

- it then looks for an account in Moodle with matching MSN ID

- if it finds it you get logged into Moodle and email displays in the Live@Edu block

 

The problems with this are...

 

- you can't use LDAP to sign in anymore so you'll need to change the auth field for all users using the plugin

- you rely on the delegated authentication working, it's gone crazy once or twice when MS were doing updates and brought bugs into the system e.g. Consent box keeps popping up, login flow doesn't work if co-branding is enabled (not sure if this has been fixed but don't dare to try it tbh)

- you have to create the Moodle accounts manually whereas the LDAP plugin auto creates suitable accounts if the authentication process completes successfully

- MS don't support the plugin at all and they barely reply on the educationlabs site now I've been helping a few people out on there recently as we've found most of the common problems by now!

- no release for Moodle 2.0 as it stands or updates for the new Office 365 features

 

If you want a demo login on our site PM me to see it in action... we use it for all our students and it works OK, the email and file storage is nice but it's frustrating as the plugin could be so much better. The odd thing is that a lot of people can't see why I think the integration is such a killer feature which is a shame really.

[jonspurs]

You can turn services such as chat on and off for different groups of users, you don't need a separate google domain.

Likewise with postini - you can create sub domains so they can get a different level of filtering than staff.

we just have a single shool.org.uk domain

 

Thanks for the reply.

If you have a single school.org.uk domain, then how does the Global Address List work? When a teacher is typing an address in, everyone in the whole school appears? Or you hidden students from the GAL individually?

Cheers,

Jon

[CyberNerd]

Thanks for the reply.

If you have a single school.org.uk domain, then how does the Global Address List work? When a teacher is typing an address in, everyone in the whole school appears? Or you hidden students from the GAL individually?

Cheers,

Jon

 

everyone appears, I think this is an advantage and we found that it encourages staff to communicate with students by chat and email - moreso than they did on MSExchange. We recommend that staff enable "undo send" and "got the wrong Bob" from google labs in case they accidentally email a student who has the same name as a member of staff

[enjay]

@cybernerd - do you find the kids abusing the chat service much or not? We opted not to enable it at first, although will trial it with some Sixth Formers during exam leave (e.g. a teacher will agree to be on chat for an hour to answer any questions).

 

I like the idea of the two Labs you've added - at present, it is only really used between staff but once people start mailing students, I'll recommend they enable those. We initially listed our staff as Mr Bloggs, but this got confusing with threaded conversations as they all appeared to be between "Me, Mr, Mr, Me, Mr" so we changed to "Fred Bloggs (staff)". The students initially had some confusion over Miss Smith and Mrs Smith, but they seem to have got over that now.

[CyberNerd]

@cybernerd - do you find the kids abusing the chat service much or not? We opted not to enable it at first, although will trial it with some Sixth Formers during exam leave (e.g. a teacher will agree to be on chat for an hour to answer any questions).

 

Inevitably there is some abuse of the chat system with certain students. It isn't a large scale problem and generally we see much more collaborative use of the technology. Smoothwall can be configured to filter chat. It is quite interesting to see filtered mails where students may be saying something along the lines that their work is sh*t - when they are actually collaborating with their peers, exactly what we want to encourage!

I think this will largely depend upon the school, and the disciplinary systems in place. It works well for us and I think it is important to use similar systems that students are used to using at home (social networking,chat,sms) in their education, otherwise school ICT systems become very distant for the students. It also goes a long way to educate students about netiquette

[enjay]

Definitely agree with all that. It is also important to properly educate staff and parents in what chat is, what it does and what it isn't - whenever you say "chat" some people will hear the words "cyber bullying" or "paedophiles".