live@edu - questions

[scumboss]

Hi All

 

We are looking into using live@edu for our student accounts. There seems to be many benefits such as 25gb of storage on SkyDrive, 10gb in Outlook Live, the new Office 365 which is coming and more. Is there anyone else using it? How do you find it? Are you using it for staff as well? Are there any drawbacks or problems with the service?

 

If a student deletes work by accident can you restore it? Do they backup often? Can you disable features such as messaging, blogs, etc? I know our students would most likely abuse it. How are students finding it when they open large files? Is your data connection coping?

 

Sorry for all questions but I couldn't find the answer to these on Microsoft's website.

 

Thanks

[RabbieBurns]

We use it. Students use it all, staff use only the office / skydrive features as we have exchange for them..

 

Have a wee read through here, theres a fairly long discussion on it, cant remember if it covers all your questions, but it might be a start

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/51127-live-edu.html

[scumboss]

Thanks for replying Rabbie unfortunately the thread doesn't answer my question about backups. I have now found out you can disable features such as messaging although I'm still unsure if you can restore backups if students deletes files on their skydrive. Any ideas?

[RabbieBurns]

I dont think you can. Their servers are all clustered/mirrored/etc so theres no chance of work being lost, but if its deleted, I am not sure of a way to restore it. We just use skydrive as a means of transporting documents, and for offline collaboration on an evening. Documents are all then saved onto our local servers each day.

[scumboss]

How are you syncing their work each day? Are you using a piece of software from Microsoft?

[RabbieBurns]

Theres not that many people that use it fully to be honest. The ones that do just save the files to their home folders once they are done with them on skydrive. All our students can access their home folders via the WWW anyway so Skydrive is just a novelty bonus that comes with live@edu for us really.