Hi everyone

 

This week our work email has been moved across to Office365 (education) and I discovered that it comes with a lot of tools that look useful.

 

Has anyone had experience with these apps within Office365?

- Class Notebook

- Staff Notebook

- Teams

- Stream

- Whiteboard

- Yammer

 

Your thoughts?

 

Cheers

 

Jayho

 

 

Hi Jayho!

I�m using teams with one group on Mondays and Wednesdays although they had to set it up. It�s OK but I definitely prefer Skype. In all honestly, I don�t really know what I am doing and my company is going to give us all a webinar to help us understand it a little better. I teach a group of code-writers on Thursday afternoons and they all laughed when I told them I was using it. They said teams was awful. Perhaps after the webinar, I will have a different opinion, but for the moment I would say it�s OK but don�t expect to see everybody you are speaking to and forget about trying to upload documents to individuals, even with onedrive. The share screen option works fine, though. 

I�m going to check out the other stuff though. They sound interesting. 

Cheers

Dale 

Edit - Just tried Streamer - Look for the channel, Weird English, it�s very entertaining and seems, at first glance, to be quite useful. 

I used Yammer at a large corporation. It was really similar to Facebook but had the advantage that it was internal.

There were staff whose job it was to check Yammer every day and take appropriate action, logging tickets etc. using the regular systems.

 

I guess the rationale is that Yammer can stop people wasting so much time on Facebook and other apps/sites at work.

Also that when people get on social media and rage about trying to follow the normal process and not getting their problem fixed, then the corporation can contact that Department and try and get the issue fixed, without customers and the public seeing it. However, my view is that you�d be better off fixing those issues in the first place so that the "correct" contact process works. 

 

There were criticisms at one time that Office 365 was only available for (or only good for?) customers on the PC/Windows platform. I�m not sure if that�s still the case. 

If you are using Zoom, be aware of the security/privacy issues. They�ve removed the undisclosed data mining (for LinkedIn) and there were two quite serious bugs which were recently patched. Those would�ve given hackers access to your microphone/camera, if you�re on a Mac. There is/was another bug that can give people access to your passwords, if you�re running Microsoft Windows. Hopefully they lift their game from now on. 

Hello Jayho,

Maybe out of the subject, but I was wondering�.

As a French teacher ( ie working for the State..) , we are provided with schools� platforms - where you can do everything possible : work on-line, do "virtual classes", send tests and mark them, and so on�..ALL the Tools ( text, video, sound..) are provided. What you have to do is : prepare your lessons. And That�s about it �.

The fact is :  I had to work a lot, because I wasn�t used to the platform ! Before the covid-19, I just wouldn�t bother ! ;-)))

Still, it is soooo helpful : everything has been done for you ! Even my  poor self can cope ;-)))

Don�t your countries provide you with these kinds of platforms ?

Just wondering�.

If not - well, I do think we are Lucky in France !

Mind you - we still have problems : Kids not connected - families with no Internet connection, and so on...But I would say less than 5 per cent of our pupils get the "lessons" ( and I work in a "poor" area�..)

It would be interesting to know how your governments give you ( or not..) the way to teach...

Take care everyone,

Val 

 Ps : Zoom ( and several others..) have been "forbidden" by the FRench government : not safe enough...

Thanks for your responses everyone.

 

I know a little bit about Teams, and I need to explore it more.

Yammer sounds good then, if it�s like facebook.

Since the Zoombombing, I�ve decided not to even explore it..

 

Staff  in my college teaching adult ESL are exploring a variety of tools including Google classroom, Zoom, Teams and Edmodo. Our institution generally uses Blackboard for vocational students but this is too difficult for most of my students, some whom have had limited schooling, not even finishing primary school. But they all generally  all know how to use email, facebook, basic internet, What�s App and Viber on their phone. My adult students are doing a 10 week enrichment course; a blended program tailored to their needs to improve a variety of skills (every ten week program is different - it�s based on their needs and experience).

 

Our students are all given an Office 365 student account, so I am going to stick with that as it seems to the most simplest option for me and  my cohort and seems to come with a suite of good teacher tools. It means that students only use one login [one user name - one password - for everything in that suite], plus it has inbuilt Word in it. I am currently finishing off my current intake by email and phone, and my next 10 week intake starts in two weeks. Without face to face contact, this next intake will be a challenge for me. If it�s all too hard, I will use just email and What�s App ... or take leave.

 

Val - our primary and secondary schools have their own system similar to yours - they are well set up.

 

Still hoping to hear from someone who has used Class Notebook - I watched a video and it seems quite good.

 

Cheers

 

Jayho