jamesbmarshall

Interesting - I hear lots of job titles, everything from IT Technician, to Network Manager, to IT Director, and occasional seasonings of "strategy" this and "officer" that. The scope, and seniority seems to vary across the country. What would you 'generalise' the title to be? Do you think it's right for that to happen? Or do you think the IT Manager should be focused on technology, and a Facilities Manager (caretaker, whatever?) should be responsible for anything else with a plug on it? This really surprises me! My thoughts were that the IT Manager should have advanced computing skills, ideally certified, and should be a example to others of how to use technology not just correctly, but to it's full potential. Do you think leading by example is the wrong approach? Totally agree, and I found that to be the case too. I did find that there was an increasing gulf between those "digital native" teachers and "digital immigrants"; on the one hand you had to rein in the enthusiasm and passion from the new teachers and ensure they were doing things that could be supported, and the other you had to try and pump a bit of enthusiasm into the veteran teachers who (naturally) fought change. Is that just a perception thing? Do you mean that people treated you in a different way as a result of your qualifications? Do you think that qualifications trump industry experience? Do you think it's important for a well-rounded IT Manager to have experience both public and private sector? Given those demands, do you think it's important for the IT Manager to be part of / better connected to the SLT in terms of aligning IT goals (such as investment in infrastructure, servers, "cloud", security, etc.) with teaching and learning goals; for example, around BYOD support, curriculum software support, classroom devices, etc.

Hi everyone, I'm working on a presentation that talks about the future of the IT Manager in education, and particularly what skills and traits that person would need over, say, the next 0-5 and maybe 5-10 years. It isn't so much a presentation about which skills to go and get, but more about how the role will evolve given the changing trends in teaching and learning, devices, the consumer market, and technology in general. So, with that in mind, I think it would be really interesting to see what anyone thinks about what those skills, traits and tasks might be in the future (particularly vs. what is required today, and has been done in the past). I'm not looking for any right or wrong answers, or even specific technologies (i.e. a Microsoft vs. Google vs. Apple debate) I'm just canvassing for opinions. I can only speak from my experiences as a network manager, and what I see day-to-day at Microsoft, but that's only one side, hence asking here! --- For example: I think that, increasingly, IT Managers wield a huge amount of long-game power. Decisions that they make about where to invest IT spend can (sometimes unwittingly) have a huge beneficial or crippling impact on budgets, pupil attainment, staff happiness, etc. so I think that I see the need for more strategic thinking, project management and leadership skills in IT Managers as well as a move from passive/reactive within the school to a more proactive/visionary stance.

That's a shame. I hope that will change in time. Correct, although you don't need to take any of the other workloads in your separate Office 365 tenant, your users will have a separate username and password to access their software benefit. It's not ideal and, like I say, it is a shame that LGfL are not planning to roll this out at the moment, but that's the situation we're in. I honestly wish I could step in a wave a magic wand to make it easier but when you take Office 365 from a third party provider, even though it's the same fundamental cloud service, you are at the mercy of what they are willing to provide.

Yes. It won't. (That sounds blunt, but it's pretty simple, read on) You have two routes: 1) Go to your service provider, in this case LGfL, and ask them about it. It's their service, and it'll be down to their desire to implement it that will dictate if you get it. 2) If you don't want to do that, or your service provider does not want to implement it, then you can sign up for Office 365 for free and do it yourself. Obviously, I talk to service providers and partners as well as you guys so it's not like they aren't aware of Student Advantage; however, how they choose to deploy Office 365 is pretty much up to them - I can't force them to offer it to you, sadly. If they can't, or won't, support it then the only option is to sign yourself up and offer it out that way.

I haven't poured over the licensing terms, but I'd imagine the small print says that the copy of Office is for that user. Clearly, that's hard to enforce if said student installs the software on the home PC and other family members make use of it but just because you can't enforce it doesn't mean it's right for you to break the rules The TechNet site goes into pretty good detail about how Office 365 ProPlus works, activates, can be deployed, etc. so I would check it out: Overview of Office 365 ProPlus

I actually spent quite a while writing a big, diplomatic, response to this but I hope you'll understand that I can't get drawn into this here. Maybe over a beer, but not here. A lot of stuff is free, some stuff you have to pay for. Your students can use the Office Mobile for iOS and Android apps for free as long as they are licensed for Office 365 ProPlus under Student Advantage, or any of the paid plans such as A3 or A4. The Office Mobile app is included in the 5 device activation. If you're already licensing your staff for Office via your EES agreement then you should speak to your re-seller about any step-up pricing to move them to A3.

How do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education? - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs As long as you've covered all of your FTEs for Office via your OVS-ES or EES VL agreement you just need to speak to your reseller to get Student Advantage. They will add the number of Office 365 ProPlus licences that you need to your agreement, and you'll get details of how to activate them against your tenant (see blog posts on my blog!). ADFS is not required, in fact none of the Office 365 workloads (i.e. Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online) are required. Office 365 ProPlus can be taken on its own via Office 365. I've spent quite a bit of time pulling everything I think people need to know to get started into some posts, they're all tagged "student advantage": Browse by Tags - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Better than DirSync + Password Sync?

There are a whole bunch of posts up on our blog to help with Student Advantage, but if you want a good place to start, look no further: Deploying and Managing Office 365 ProPlus - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Pretty sure @GrumbleDook would have something to add here! Storing your data in the cloud, no matter who it is with, should be thought about carefully and it's a topic that's shrouded by a large amount of FUD. If you're interested in finding out more about how Microsoft secures your data in the cloud, the best place to go is the trust center: Office 365 Trust Center.

Resellers were not able to process orders until Dec 1st since that's when the benefit launched, so you should see this appear over the next couple of days.

You can already massively customise the AD FS login page, but it isn't possible to make any changes to the standard Office 365 sign-in page.

Currently no, you'd need to deploy AD FS (other SSO solutions are available) to achieve this today. That said; watch this space.

First up, I know this isn't strictly in the right part of the forum but since the cloud services board is almost a micro-community in itself I thought I'd post here. So, after over 3 years as the Live@edu and Office 365 Education guy in the UK team at Microsoft it's time I moved onto a new challenge in Windows 8.1 deployment. (And Now for Something Completely Different - James Marshall.) EduGeek is an awesome place! The contributors - that's you guys - are also all awesome. Even the Google-lovers! ;-) I hope that while I've been lurking I've helped a few of you, and generally been useful to have around. I'll still be around of course, and still public sector (maybe even edu, who knows), so this isn't necessarily "goodbye", but it is "I'm moving". They will be hiring a replacement for me so if you are up for a challenge and feel you have what it takes then let me know. There's no JD yet or anything, it's all TBD. Thank you everyone!

Yes. Drop me the "something.onmicrosoft.com" name of your tenant as a PM. Will work with you to get it sorted.

Office 365 Service Descriptions is your friend.

Yes you can, to an on-prem or third party service. If you want it in the cloud in Exchange Online then it comes under Exchange Online Plan 2. Nothing to stop you using free Exchange Online and journaling out to somewhere else.

Did you run the desktop setup wizard? Set up your desktop for Office 365 - Office 365 for enterprises

No, Office 365 ProPlus under Student Advantage only applies to students. Staff can get it either as a paid for stand alone component or under plan A3.

I'm not sure if you've read the stuff in this thread, but I think it's pretty clear that Student Advantage is a benefit that allows schools to enable Office 365 ProPlus, the downloadable full client version of Office. Office 365 is just the delivery vehicle for the benefit - if you read part three of the blog series you'll understand that you don't need to take all of Office 365 Education to get the benefit: How do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education? (Part Three) - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

December's not far away! I've put some blog posts together that might be useful for some people: 1. For existing Office 365 schools on how to get Student Advantage: How do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education? - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs 2. For students on how to access Office 365 ProPlus once the school has assigned it: How do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education? (Part 2) - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs 3. For schools who don't have Office 365, but want Student Advantage: How do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education? (Part Three) - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs I hope they help!

This is likely to have nothing to do with the DNS or who is in control - which makes things a bit easier. If you're getting that error it is likely to be because at some point in the past that domain has been used to create a Live@edu or Office 365 Education tenant. You cannot have the same domain name in more than one tenant at once, and even if you just created it as a flight-of-fancy unless you deleted it, it's probably still there. If you own the domain, and are still having issues (assuming you cannot locate any other instances) then contact Microsoft Support.

Have you logged this with Microsoft Support? It's free, 24x7, and the best place for queries like this.

Why don't you configure Outlook for them with their Office 365 account?

This makes me sad.